Communist Views

[devonin]

Re: Communist Views

Communists are, quite frankly, wrong.

...Okay, let's see how.

Having someone take your personal property at your own expense because you're not utilizing it to the fullest just makes things worse.

One: Marx and anybody who is a communist and not also an idiot knows better than to ever think that you could convert a capitalism into a communism ever, and have any hope of success. Nobody can "take" your personal property in communism, because you have none such. That you have personal property now is because this is not communism. To convert means failure. Communism will ONLY work if it is VOLUNTARY. You could go off to an empty parcel of land, and set one up, or you could do what Marx suggests which is wait for his perceived inevitable collapse of capitalism. Nobody's taking anything.

When you work hard every day only to see your earnings divided up among your comrades and are forced to trust that they will do the same to protect you. This is the first seed of distrust among men, the first sign that things might go wrong.

You work hard every day to contribute to the overall success of the collective. You don't need to "trust that they will do the same" because they WILL do the same, or they aren't actually taking part in the labouring for the collective good. I see so many people go "Oh, well if we're sharing everything equally, I'll just slack off, or not work, and get my equal share, haha I win" except no, you don't, because you aren't following the rules you agreed to and will be REMOVED FROM THE SYSTEM. You don't put into the system, you don't get out of the system. Done.

The very fact that everyone is forced into the same condition stifles all creativity, all desire for advancement and any thought on how to get further. There is no incentive to do anything but the minimum.

Also not correct. Nowhere in proper communism does it say everyone gets X/Y where X is the total resources available and Y is the number of people. That's NOT HOW COMMUNISM WORKS. The premise of communism ends with "To each according to their needs" where does it say that everyone's needs are equal? Someone who is willing to labour at some unskilled manual task for 30 hours a week because someone needs to do it needs much less to get by, in terms of assistance that someone who is say...a doctor and doing very difficult, time consuming, dangerous work 70 hour weeks. Such a person might "need" more vacation time, they might "need" someone to prepare meals for their family etc etc.

A single person living alone, supporting only themselves needs less than someone with 3 young children. What would be guarenteed equally would be a minimum standard of living, and the extra resources after that standard was met would be used to subsidize those whose needs are greater than others. I mean, I personally need very little to maintain my desired standard of living. Even in a capitalist society, I can live quite happily for myself on something around about 15,000 dollars a year. When my parents had three children all living at home, they needed substantially more than that.

Creativity is also not at all stifled. People who are gifted in fields like R&D would have ample resources allocated to try and make things as efficient and cost-effective as possible. There are also all kinds of psychological factors in the proper running of a society. People -need- entertainment too. So there's a need for entertainers. While professional athletes could kiss 20 million a year goodbye, there'd be plenty of resources allocated for artists, writers, actors etc etc.

If you feel you got "ripped off" in a purchase, but you still bought it, revealed preference shows that you still value the good at more than what you paid for it. Communism can't claim that.

The fact that in a communism, there would have to be some sort of equivalent to 'price fixing' in that the system coudln't possibly allocate your share of resources based on the individual preferences and rankings you assign to things is the one really good objection I'm seeing in that post.

It would be very difficult to allocate for entertainments, or things like luxery foods etc unless you were to create what would generally amount to capitalism anyway in the form of simply giving credits that could be used for your choice of things. The risk there is that if you like or don't like certain goods in capitalism you simply opt out of acquiring them, and the price will either drop because nobody wants it, or the company making the good will have to change or fail, whereas in Communism it would be much harder to accurately gauge "which things" of a given set of things should be valued where.

There'd really just have to be an awful lot by way of voting and referendums on things, so as to try and at least maximize the availability of things people actively desire to have access to.

What it comes down to is basically this, while we're quoting statesmen: "For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing those people will like."

Communism can NEVER be MADE to work, it will ONLY work if the people involved want it to work. This is why every communist state has either failed, or just stopped actually being communist. This is also why every hippy commune tended to work perfectly fine. With volunteers who like the system and want to see it succed, it works very well, arguably better than capitalism does. The problem is that most people living in capitalist states don't like that system, and wouldn't want to see it succed, so it doesn't.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Communist Views

Nobody can "take" your personal property in communism, because you have none such. That you have personal property now is because this is not communism. To convert means failure. Communism will ONLY work if it is VOLUNTARY. You could go off to an empty parcel of land, and set one up, or you could do what Marx suggests which is wait for his perceived inevitable collapse of capitalism. Nobody's taking anything.

In this hypothetical variant of the ideology. However many communist ideologues throughout history have used force and coercion to try and bring about communism, through the establishment of a socialist state designed to represent the needs of the people/workers (as part of the grander, necessary dialectical progression of blah blah blah). Whether you consider all of these people "idiots" or not, they still represent many Marxist ideas and hence reflect on what most people consider and hence talk about when they speak about communism.

I see so many people go "Oh, well if we're sharing everything equally, I'll just slack off, or not work, and get my equal share, haha I win" except no, you don't, because you aren't following the rules you agreed to and will be REMOVED FROM THE SYSTEM. You don't put into the system, you don't get out of the system. Done.

What if you're mistaken and the reason a person isn't working hard is because they have an undiagnosed illness which is inhibiting their work? Or perhaps just because of some innate personal difference they don't perform as well as other workers of seemingly equivalent physical and mental standing? Whatever you try to do to accommodate for this, you will end up hurting some innocent people. You will also fail to curtail some cases of fraud.

The premise of communism ends with "To each according to their needs" where does it say that everyone's needs are equal? Someone who is willing to labour at some unskilled manual task for 30 hours a week because someone needs to do it needs much less to get by, in terms of assistance that someone who is say...a doctor and doing very difficult, time consuming, dangerous work 70 hour weeks. Such a person might "need" more vacation time, they might "need" someone to prepare meals for their family etc etc.

I think, although this is correct in detail, that you missed the point. Needs may vary from person to person based on the circumstances, but they will still be (in principle anyways) met regardless of how much a given person actually produces. In practice of course, this can lead to the simple problem of production being less than demand. Then what?

Let's look at the other side too. What does a communist society do if they ever have a surplus? Burn it? Distribute it according to some complex formula? Need has long ceased to be an issue, do we just give everyone equal shares of the surplus?

What would be guarenteed equally would be a minimum standard of living, and the extra resources after that standard was met would be used to subsidize those whose needs are greater than others.

What does this mean? All surpluses go to the disabled? To doctors? Please clarify.

Creativity is also not at all stifled. People who are gifted in fields like R&D would have ample resources allocated to try and make things as efficient and cost-effective as possible.

How is talent discovered? History is filled with inventors and intellectuals who made discoveries or breakthroughs completely outside of official channels. In many cases the things that enabled them to do so, like personal wealth, ideas in conflict with those of the establishment, or a freedom due to a lack of the regulation that goes along with holding a public post, would be absent in a communist society.

There are also all kinds of psychological factors in the proper running of a society. People -need- entertainment too. So there's a need for entertainers. While professional athletes could kiss 20 million a year goodbye, there'd be plenty of resources allocated for artists, writers, actors etc etc.

The government or public would be deciding what constitutes art? Or what the utility of a given piece of art is? Then making funding decisions based on this? Frankly this sounds so thoroughly ridiculous I can't even begin to understand how you could actually suggest it.

It would be very difficult to allocate for entertainments, or things like luxery foods etc unless you were to create what would generally amount to capitalism anyway in the form of simply giving credits that could be used for your choice of things. The risk there is that if you like or don't like certain goods in capitalism you simply opt out of acquiring them, and the price will either drop because nobody wants it, or the company making the good will have to change or fail, whereas in Communism it would be much harder to accurately gauge "which things" of a given set of things should be valued where.

If anyone is actually laboring to produce things which are not purely of necessity in this suggested society of yours, it means that their efforts are not necessary for the production of necessities. Hence it's of no actual consequence that they lose their jobs.

There'd really just have to be an awful lot by way of voting and referendums on things, so as to try and at least maximize the availability of things people actively desire to have access to.

The market already maximizes the availability of things people desire access to. That includes necessities. That's what makes damn near this entire discussion entirely moot.

Communism can NEVER be MADE to work, it will ONLY work if the people involved want it to work.

Not even then, really. It can work in certain small groups when conditions are right. In general communist ideology places too much emphasis on redistribution of wealth and not enough on production of wealth, to the point that all efforts to actually produce anything of value are almost impossible simply because the people in charge of planning production don't actually know; can't actually know; what it is that people value.

This is why every communist state has either failed, or just stopped actually being communist. This is also why every hippy commune tended to work perfectly fine. With volunteers who like the system and want to see it succed, it works very well, arguably better than capitalism does. The problem is that most people living in capitalist states don't like that system, and wouldn't want to see it succed, so it doesn't.

This is completely false. Communism, or something crudely resembling it at any rate, can work in small, agrarian groups. That's essentially it. This is because the only real concern is the production of food, there is no real specialization of labor except for maybe a priest or leader class of some sort, who are allowed simply because human societies inevitably have something of the sort (even if it's purely informal and just consists of those who are "experts" by public opinion, for whom the public occasionally goes to ask advice specific to their perceived expertise). To the extent anything happens like the production of something resembling private property, nobody really cares, because due to the primitive nature of society it can never manifest in any sort of visible class difference. The food supply is public, that is essentially the only concern.

You couldn't take Ford Motor Company and nationalize it and produce vehicles "for the people". Not even if every citizen in the United States consented. You couldn't fuse every car company into Consolidated People's Cars and do a better job meeting demands for vehicles than the market. The market is the voice of the people. As close as anything could ever be to it, barring some anomaly like mind-control technology that would allow people to dictate the demands of the public rather than simply try to gauge them.

[devonin]

Re: Communist Views

In this hypothetical variant of the ideology. However many communist ideologues throughout history have used force and coercion to try and bring about communism, through the establishment of a socialist state designed to represent the needs of the people/workers (as part of the grander, necessary dialectical progression of blah blah blah). Whether you consider all of these people "idiots" or not, they still represent many Marxist ideas and hence reflect on what most people consider and hence talk about when they speak about communism.

I simply suggest that someone using force and coercion to try and bring about a marxist ideology failed to understand marxist ideology and are mis-applying it. They 'reflect on what most people consider...about communism' only as a straw man version of what communism is supposed to be.

What if you're mistaken and the reason a person isn't working hard is because they have an undiagnosed illness which is inhibiting their work? Or perhaps just because of some innate personal difference they don't perform as well as other workers of seemingly equivalent physical and mental standing? Whatever you try to do to accommodate for this, you will end up hurting some innocent people. You will also fail to curtail some cases of fraud.

One assumes that if you have some illness or condition which is inhibiting your work, you will have some concept of the fact that you aren't well, some sort of symptoms which can point to your disability. Testing people so that their condition is not undiagnosed any longer solves this problem. Furthermore, under the current system, plenty of innocent poeple are hurt and cases of fraud are not curtailed by people abusing disability, unemployment, etc etc. Any system in which people can claim to be unable to do their fair share is prone to at least some abuse, if this is true of communism and capitalism, it can't be held up as a knock against only one.

I think, although this is correct in detail, that you missed the point. Needs may vary from person to person based on the circumstances, but they will still be (in principle anyways) met regardless of how much a given person actually produces. In practice of course, this can lead to the simple problem of production being less than demand. Then what?

This is one of the reasons why the smaller the scale, the more likely to be successful the communist state. What happens when there's a shortage in capitalism? Either people reallocate their efforts to stop producing something in surplus to produce what is in shortage, or people do without. How should communism be required to solve this problem to be viable when capitalism has the same issue? People demand what isn't supplied sufficiently all the time. Intelligent allocation of labour can solve this problem just as easily in either system.

Let's look at the other side too. What does a communist society do if they ever have a surplus? Burn it? Distribute it according to some complex formula? Need has long ceased to be an issue, do we just give everyone equal shares of the surplus?

If people are producing more than what is needed, people who would like to can simply decrease the amount of labour they are putting into the system, and have more leisure time. Alternatively, yes, you can maintain your current labour output which is generating a surplus, and then you have a larger pool of resources from which to distribute. If everyone gets eight weeks per year of paid vacation time, and we're producing too much, we can give everyone nine weeks per year, or eight weeks plus a day or whatever. More alternatively still, we can invest that surplus into research, development, the arts etc. I can think of plenty of ways to handle a surplus.

What does this mean? All surpluses go to the disabled? To doctors? Please clarify.

I was pointing out that "Everything is shared equally" was not a correct, or at least not a fully correct statement, and suggesting instead that "Everyone is equally entitled to a certain standard of living which would be shared among all people" Which I guess you could say would be "The needs of the least needy person" and then, once they have their needs met, you work your way up the line until needs are met. Excess resources as per my previous statement.

How is talent discovered? History is filled with inventors and intellectuals who made discoveries or breakthroughs completely outside of official channels. In many cases the things that enabled them to do so, like personal wealth, ideas in conflict with those of the establishment, or a freedom due to a lack of the regulation that goes along with holding a public post, would be absent in a communist society.

History is filled with people who made discoveries outside official channels because in history, formal education was generally fixed and constant for all people who could afford it. A "classical education" in the trivium and quadrivium and all that. Modern education allows for a student to dabble in the early years to see what interests them and where their skills lie, and then specialise in that field. A lot more people who turned out to be good engineers, craftsmen, artisans etc did so via the education system rather than having the free time and money to indulge in whatever they felt like until they hit upon something they were good at.

The government or public would be deciding what constitutes art? Or what the utility of a given piece of art is? Then making funding decisions based on this? Frankly this sounds so thoroughly ridiculous I can't even begin to understand how you could actually suggest it.

It sounds ridiculous to suggest that perhaps there would be a resource allocation for publishing books from non-authors who wrote in their spare time, and then if those books were well-recieved, the writer could begin to contribute to the society via writing rather than what they were doing previously? That doesn't sound especially ridiculous to me.

If anyone is actually laboring to produce things which are not purely of necessity in this suggested society of yours, it means that their efforts are not necessary for the production of necessities. Hence it's of no actual consequence that they lose their jobs.

True enough, unless you consider that you could charcterize the occasional need for fancy clothing, or food which is not strictly as nutritious and efficient as it could be to be a 'need' if simply because of the human need to occasionally break up the monotony.

I'll also point out that this was me describing an -objection- to communism, and you appear to have objected to my objection.

The market already maximizes the availability of things people desire access to. That includes necessities. That's what makes damn near this entire discussion entirely moot.

You'll notice how capitalism is currently the prevailing economic model in the world. Clearly for where we're at, it's working fine for us. Doesn't mean it always will, and it doesn't mean that just because it's working -well- that it is the -best- choice we could be making. Capitalism grows upwards out of a driving force which is consuming at an increasing rate of growth. Everything will keep out working great until that consumption outstrips resources. Then the conversation will not be moot.

In general communist ideology places too much emphasis on redistribution of wealth and not enough on production of wealth, to the point that all efforts to actually produce anything of value are almost impossible simply because the people in charge of planning production don't actually know; can't actually know; what it is that people value.

The driving force behind many previously occuring 'communist revolutions' has been one of redistribution of wealth because these revolutions were forced onto an existing capitalist economy, or at least an economy where there was a distinct economic class-based system, and the poor at the bottom were convinced that it would be a great idea to take from the rich at the top and spread it around. Once again, I suggest that a communism can never be MADE to work, and can basically never be forced overtop of an existing system. If a group of people set out on their own to live according to this ideology, it woudln't be focused on redistribution of wealth at all, because there would be no uneven distribution to redistribute in the first place. The concern would be production of resources because they are starting from scratch.

This is completely false.

Nothing in your statements following this one actually said anything about my statement to show that it was false.

I claimed that you cannot make the system work, and suggested that the evidence for that was that in every case where it was -made- to be, it has failed, or at least stopped succeeding. You didn't prove that statement wrong.

I claimed that it can only work if everyone involved actively wants it to work, and suggested that the evidence for that was that in many cases where a group of people chose to live communally, it worked quite well. You didn't prove that statement wrong.

I claimed that the reason why you can't make it work is that the people involved have to want it to work, and since capitalists, by definition, don't want it to work, you can't make communists out of capitalists, which you didn't just not prove wrong, but agreed with wholeheartedly.

You couldn't take Ford Motor Company and nationalize it and produce vehicles "for the people". Not even if every citizen in the United States consented.

The executives and shareholders of ford motor company would never ever in one million years under any remotely realistic circumstances agree to nationalize the company, so "even if they consented" is a meaningless conditional to that statement.

Also, glad to have you back

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Communist Views

They 'reflect on what most people consider...about communism' only as a straw man version of what communism is supposed to be.

Or perhaps you're committing a "No true Scotsman". Either way labels aren't important, ideas are. I don't quite see how you can use "dissenters ruin communism" as an argument, considering killing them silences them just as easily as not having them in the first place. Also the basic logic of this argument, "blame something else", can and has been essentially extrapolated to infinity (international conspirators will always conspire to ruin communism, the existence of non-communist countries won't allow it to work, there are intrinsic unalterable biological/social/psychological attributes which blah blah etc) hence making it worthless.

One assumes that if you have some illness or condition which is inhibiting your work, you will have some concept of the fact that you aren't well, some sort of symptoms which can point to your disability.

Why. Or rather, no.

Testing people so that their condition is not undiagnosed any longer solves this problem.

1. This has a cost
2. You're not that smart, and neither is anyone you employ to do the job. Whoever tries this is going to make sins of both omission and commission no matter how hard they try.

Furthermore, under the current system, plenty of innocent poeple are hurt and cases of fraud are not curtailed by people abusing disability, unemployment, etc etc. Any system in which people can claim to be unable to do their fair share is prone to at least some abuse, if this is true of communism and capitalism, it can't be held up as a knock against only one.

People aren't asked to leave this country if they can't prove disability. Yes, welfare systems are abused, but the law is still enforced so there's still measures in place to dissuade people from fraud. Meanwhile the fact that the penalty for being "unproductive" is simply an absence of income rather than exile seems much more fair.

What happens when there's a shortage in capitalism? Either people reallocate their efforts to stop producing something in surplus to produce what is in shortage, or people do without. How should communism be required to solve this problem to be viable when capitalism has the same issue?

Capitalism doesn't have the same issue. You also make it sound like real world production works like some sort of RTS strategy game. No one retools the Ferrari factory to make cheerios. One of the principal reasons for this is that they never have to. The things that there are shortages of in capitalist systems are invariably luxaries, like I-pods. If it becomes the concern of the state that there are NOT ENOUGH I-PODS to meet demand, then even if the state represents the general will of the people, at that point they honestly all deserve to burn in hell.

There seems to be this perverse and pervasive instinct to demand as a right things that didn't even exist until yesterday, that everyone was perfectly happy to live without when they hadn't conceived of it yet, that took some poor bastard years to design and build. You want to make your grand social crusade about ****ing Nintendo games? Inequalities in SANDWICH SIZE? Differences in waiting lines at the movie theater? Every year, THANKS TO CAPITALISM, problems of health and welfare get smaller and smaller, new innovations come about, standards of living improve, and life in general gets better for everyone.

That doesn't stop the complaints though, and of course not, because inequality never goes away. At this point it's not important though, and even if it were, the things that pass as cures would only serve to make sure everyone was equal in misery. Actually not even that.

Intelligent allocation of labour can solve this problem just as easily in either system.

No, it can't. If by intelligent allocation of labor you mean a centrally organized economic system, you're absolutely wrong.

If on the other hand you mean that laborers are paid according to how much demand there is for their services, with the price system serving as an incentive to train in certain fields (and individuals with foresight planning ahead on the basis of expected future gains), then you're correct.

There's also the underlying problem here of the labor-centric perspective. How much does labor really have to do with scarcity? That's stupid. You can't blame the workers for everything. Probably not even for half of things.

If people are producing more than what is needed, people who would like to can simply decrease the amount of labour they are putting into the system, and have more leisure time. Alternatively, yes, you can maintain your current labour output which is generating a surplus, and then you have a larger pool of resources from which to distribute.

People already do this in our current economy.

If everyone gets eight weeks per year of paid vacation time, and we're producing too much, we can give everyone nine weeks per year, or eight weeks plus a day or whatever. More alternatively still, we can invest that surplus into research, development, the arts etc. I can think of plenty of ways to handle a surplus.

A surplus of what? I don't think whatever random surplus you have at any given point is guaranteed to be particularly liquid. So suppose you melt down Ferrari's for the scrap metal. Again, that costs money. You also might find out 3 months later that demand rises and now you have a shortage because you reacted too hastily. This happens simply because you can't predict the future. If by some chance you can predict the future, please tell me, I would naturally expect this talent to be quite useful in the stock-market.

Honestly, find me any person or group of people that can predictably and accurately gauge future demand for all products and services. They would have to have collected a good 50% of the wealth of the world by now simply between themselves. The media exposure for those types of people must be ridiculous. Find them for me and then we can put them in charge of everything, as their qualifications would be transparently obvious.

History is filled with people who made discoveries outside official channels because in history, formal education was generally fixed and constant for all people who could afford it. A "classical education" in the trivium and quadrivium and all that. Modern education allows for a student to dabble in the early years to see what interests them and where their skills lie, and then specialise in that field. A lot more people who turned out to be good engineers, craftsmen, artisans etc did so via the education system rather than having the free time and money to indulge in whatever they felt like until they hit upon something they were good at.

Exactly my point. Under the current system most people who become good at things do it through official channels, but some do not. Under your proposed system they would only have the opportunity to do it through official channels.

Also when you make education a matter of the state, standards are bound to come under discussion. Someone will always be mad at you for teaching the wrong thing or the wrong way, because that's a waste of time and resources, and someone will always be mad at you for not teaching the right thing or the right way. And most of the time the two will be the same thing. Good luck.

It sounds ridiculous to suggest that perhaps there would be a resource allocation for publishing books from non-authors who wrote in their spare time, and then if those books were well-recieved, the writer could begin to contribute to the society via writing rather than what they were doing previously? That doesn't sound especially ridiculous to me.

That's probably because you're not actually considering the implications. You are placing the tools of the artist in either the hands of the bureaucrat or the hands of the populous (if not both), and asking the artist to first win their favor and then create their art. The fact that under this system there could never be such a thing as unpopular art, is immediately and profoundly damning to it.

Yes, "in their free time" many people could create amateur art with the resources they could muster. It would inevitably be less than what they could get in the market. They could never go to, say, a single wealthy lover of avante-garde music and compose for commission. They could never neglect the working world, as so many artists do, to simply focus on their work, because the system requires them to work. And only if what they made was pleasing to the public or the government could they obtain resources for any particularly demanding project.

No, this is stupid, and your suggestion and defense of it reflects very poorly upon you.

True enough, unless you consider that you could charcterize the occasional need for fancy clothing, or food which is not strictly as nutritious and efficient as it could be to be a 'need' if simply because of the human need to occasionally break up the monotony.

I don't. There are things that I don't have that roughly 99.9% of the human population has. I do not consider it a violation of my rights that I do not have these things, nor would I consider it a formal obligation for me to be provided with these things. That being said demands for such things are satisfied best by the market.

I'll also point out that this was me describing an -objection- to communism, and you appear to have objected to my objection.

I honestly wonder how much of anything we're discussing relates directly to communism, but I realize it doesn't particularly matter. The system you proposed basically had a free-market system for everything except necessities. Hence I was not defending your system but rather explaining what seemed to be an attribute that belonged to it (in theory), by definition. The fact that you missed this struck me as absurd.

You'll notice how capitalism is currently the prevailing economic model in the world. Clearly for where we're at, it's working fine for us. Doesn't mean it always will, and it doesn't mean that just because it's working -well- that it is the -best- choice we could be making.

There is no system yet demonstrated either in theory or in practice that is superior to the free market.

Capitalism grows upwards out of a driving force which is consuming at an increasing rate of growth. Everything will keep out working great until that consumption outstrips resources. Then the conversation will not be moot.

That's not the driving force of capitalism. What makes the market work is that supply and demand reach equilibrium. This would be true even if demand were completely non-existent. It is perfectly possible for the entire world to voluntarily starve to death if they so choose. This would be capitalism just as much as Wal-Mart or Hustler.

The driving force behind many previously occuring 'communist revolutions' has been one of redistribution of wealth because these revolutions were forced onto an existing capitalist economy, or at least an economy where there was a distinct economic class-based system, and the poor at the bottom were convinced that it would be a great idea to take from the rich at the top and spread it around. Once again, I suggest that a communism can never be MADE to work, and can basically never be forced overtop of an existing system. If a group of people set out on their own to live according to this ideology, it woudln't be focused on redistribution of wealth at all, because there would be no uneven distribution to redistribute in the first place. The concern would be production of resources because they are starting from scratch.

So then I object to this and you counter that communism would be crushed by the international presence of capitalist countries. Or one of a billion other excuses.

Uneven distribution will always happen. How do you handle the fact that a river only flows in one direction, that it carries with it pollution from upstream, that water is depleted by heavy agriculture? How do you handle that people will use more of things if they don't have a direct cost? How do you account for any depletion of resources which limits what the person next in line has access to? As long as it's finite they might want more. As long as it's allocated by something other than the laws of supply and demand, distribution will not be in equilibrium.

Nothing in your statements following this one actually said anything about my statement to show that it was false.

I claimed that you cannot make the system work, and suggested that the evidence for that was that in every case where it was -made- to be, it has failed, or at least stopped succeeding. You didn't prove that statement wrong.

I claimed that it can only work if everyone involved actively wants it to work, and suggested that the evidence for that was that in many cases where a group of people chose to live communally, it worked quite well. You didn't prove that statement wrong.

I claimed that the reason why you can't make it work is that the people involved have to want it to work, and since capitalists, by definition, don't want it to work, you can't make communists out of capitalists, which you didn't just not prove wrong, but agreed with wholeheartedly.

See, this is where the real pedigree of your thinking shows up. Every suggested real life example of a failure of any Marxist idea, any idea at all, is dismissed as unrelated or irrelevent. And with statements like this:

The executives and shareholders of ford motor company would never ever in one million years under any remotely realistic circumstances agree to nationalize the company, so "even if they consented" is a meaningless conditional to that statement.

Every suggested hypothetical example is dismissed. Under what circumstances would a Marxist ever admit to being wrong? All of their "thinking" is designed to make refutation impossible, to make Marxist theory unfalsifiable.

Agrarian societies have wealth inequality, it just isn't obvious. Ironically wealth inequality tends to become more obvious as it gets less important, but I suppose you wouldn't care about a little detail like that either.

My statement about Ford Motor company wasn't about whether or not Capitalists can be made into Communists (which again is also a stupid way of thinking because it's too concerned with labor and people as opposed to the 10 BILLION other types of resources that are involved in any economy, and all of the non-human factors). It was a statement about the fundamentally unavoidable nature of things like wealth inequality, and the fundamental impossibility of using central planning to meet demand better than the market.

There are so many things that are damn near analytically false about the arguments being given that I honestly feel that some of my responses might actually not be substantive at all. Take for example one of the most obvious, glaring details hovering over this entire affair; if there are enough resources to actually meet a problem in a communist system, then there are enough to meet it to spare in a capitalist system, because distribution, planning, and all of that business costs additional resources.

Now do something stupid like claim none of this is relevant (or "meaningful") because it's "just theory". Or stop wasting my time. Communal societies can work. Communism cannot work, not even one tenth as well as its supporters could ever think. You can lessen wealth inequality, but you can never eliminate it. You can centrally plan an economy but it will be inefficient and wasteful (and frequently inadequate to demands), no matter how competent the planners. A voluntarily communal society will naturally have less problems than an involuntary communal one, but neither can solve certain fundamental issues (like wealth inequality).

Actually now that I think about the whole discussion is mostly moot because a voluntary communal society need not be in conflict with the market, and if it ever became the superior form of economy people would naturally shift to it. However all this business about the necessity for central economic planning is silly.


Alright at this point I'm pretty sure I managed to stop thinking but continue typing. I'll come back to this sometime later when I can do both at the same time.

AND STOP WELCOMING ME BACK EVERY TIME I MAKE A GOD DAMN POST, Jesus

[The_Q]

Re: Communist Views

Just to clarify, in the time since I've studied the Manifesto, history of communism, economics etc. and have come to the same conclusions devonin has. He's dismantled and repaired my argument just as I would have and I'm glad he has.

In case anybody asks why I haven't defended myself.

Q

[devonin]

Re: Communist Views

Rather than do another big 'ol "quote all your responses individually and respond to them" post, let's try something different.


I'm not against capitalism. I live in a capitalist society, I work for my wages, I use those wages to buy whatever I damn well want to, and I'm perfectly willing to grant that the system works -reasonably well- I'm even willing to grant that the system -right now- works better than communism would -right now- This is why I don't vote marxist/leninist in elections, and why I don't boycott and protest "The Man" like many more ardent socialists do.

I suppose the better thing to have done would have been to move away from the word 'communism' entirely, because Kilroy, like most other Capitalists seem to have some very fixed and immovable ideas about what communism is and entails because of their knowledge of systems like the Soviet Union, Communist China etc etc.

In the sense of how those nations have interpreted and attempted to carry out communism, I'm not a communist, because their communism was not much more than a very thinly veiled dictatorship aimed at trying to manage far more citizens than they had the manpower or resources to actually manage. Of course China portrayed its political and economic system as being a friend to the common peasant. If they hadn't they'd have had a few too many pissed off peasants to deal with.

What I -am- however, is a socialist. I look at countries like Canada, Britain and France that have nationalised healthcare, and I see the ways in which that works SO MUCH BETTER to me. I look at countries that have nationalised education, and see them producing as good and better scholars and professionals than many countries with private education.

I look at the logic of arguments like "It is unfair for me to have to pay in taxes so a person who isn't me can get an operation, if -I'm- healthy, I shouldn't have to pay anything for health care I don't use" and then I see people who -do- have health insurance to cover the costs of operations, and hear stories about how -after- the operation, the insurance company has staff whose sole job is to find ways to retroactively have not agreed to pay for the procedure.

All over the world, further nationalisation and subsidization of services, paid for by higher rates of taxation is taking place more and more in countries that the UN is routinely placing as the top countries to live in, for employment, for health, for quality of life. Canada used to top that list every year, the US was a close second. Now we're both barely hanging into the top 10 under sweden, finland, norway, countries that are becoming more and more left-wing and socialist with each election.

I say I'm a communist because voluntary participation in a communist system seems like the logical eventual growth of these countries that are becoming more and more socialist. The logical end of more and more of your labour going into a central pool via taxation and coming back to everyone through subsidized services is to have ALL of your labour going into a central pool via taxation and coming back to everyone through ALL subsidized services.

Sure, a 100% pure and complete communist state may not work, may not even be possible. Some small percentage of one's income may simply NEED to remain in the hands of the individual to spend as they personally prefer just to answer to objections like Kilroy's with regards to the arts, entertainment, luxuries etc.

But that doesn't mean the system can't develop into one where -all- needs are met through subsidization and nationalisation of those needed things. And since the countries that are heading down that road are doing perfectly well, while they may not contain the largest number of dollar billionaires in the world, and everyone there seems reasonably fit, healthy and happy, I see no reason why advocating that system, and its logical progression towards communism is somehow ignorant, or foolish, or lacking in any kind of reason or logic. I'm pointing to cases where moving in that direction is benefitting people, and saying "Therefore, it is beneficial"

And I'm sorry I welcomed you back all of what, twice? It's just nice to have more people posting in CT in general, and you and I have always had some really interesting discussions.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Communist Views

Oh for god's sake, I'm not opposed to your ideas because you labeled them "communist", and I'm not opposed to them because I consider murder to be an intrinsic aspect of communal societies. I'm objecting to them because they're wrong. Often simply by merit of the fact that your examples don't meet your own definitions. Case in point, you named my counterexample of agrarian communal societies as an example in your favor, completely neglecting the claim that wealth and class equality (things named as fundamentally important aspects of communism) didn't actually exist in them.

In fact what you've been describing (in every case) doesn't even seem to be communism but rather socialism, but it doesn't matter because I'm responding to the ideas and not the label.

and then I see people who -do- have health insurance to cover the costs of operations, and hear stories about how -after- the operation, the insurance company has staff whose sole job is to find ways to retroactively have not agreed to pay for the procedure.

If they do this by illegal means they can and should be prosecuted. If they don't, then technically this is just an instance of an anti-fraud measure. You know, that thing we were talking about a mere post ago? How do any problems that stem from these types of measure get better when the measure is applied not just to the cost of a single health care operation, but indeed to the ability to even participate in the economy at all?

The system can develop to have all basic services rendered as fully subsidized government services. This just isn't optimal.

The problem is not with your observation but with your logic (and the fact that you are trying to simply combine the two rather than to test the implications of the logic against reality). Yes, services can be nationalized. Yes, there are countries with high standards of living and nationalized services, including health care.

The problem is in your arguments, in the way you're conceiving of the economy in general.

The logical end of more and more of your labour going into a central pool via taxation and coming back to everyone through subsidized services is to have ALL of your labour going into a central pool via taxation and coming back to everyone through ALL subsidized services.

Labour, labour, labour, labour, labour. Problem one with Marxism, not everything is actually about labour. This is important. Make a mental note of it to reference whenever you are considering economic arguments.

Problems two and three are simply your association of the standards of living of socialist countries with their socialist attributes, and beyond that your misinterpretation of the way a socialistic political economy actually works (which seems designed to shoe-horn as much Marxist reasoning as possible into the explanation no matter how obtuse or difficult).

Yes, a nationalized healthcare system can provide everybody with healthcare. This is not because nationalized services are more efficient. In fact almost by definition they are less efficient. The reason nationalized services can provide service to a nation is simply because a country can easily consolidate wealth for large projects. The consolidation and allocation of said wealth has its own costs, but as long as it's within certain limits of what the private sector can actually produce, it doesn't cause any real dramatic problems.

If you want to know why socialism works while communism doesn't, it's not because of any of the reasons you've given. There's not a country in the world without dissidents. If communism was really more efficient than capitalism it would be just as capable of dealing with them. What utility does one extra laborer have that in his absence the entire economy cannot function? This is silly. Every argument given along these lines is silly.

How about I skip straight to the end: this is how economics work. The market produces wealth. To the extent that there is interference in the market, wealth is not created but simply redistributed. This redistribution has a cost.

x + y - ( z / a) = b. Ceterus paribus.

x = Each individuals market accumulation of wealth
y = The wealth that gets redistributed to them (keep in mind that unless this number is 0 for everybody, it must be a negative number for some number of people.)
z = the total cost of redistribution (excluding what is already contained in Y)
a = number of people
b = their personal standard of living


Of course this is a ridiculous oversimplification, but if you want to get more detailed we can do that later. Meanwhile you will notice simply by studying this formula that the presence of z at all when non-zero means that while a specific persons standard of living can be higher, the average standard of living will have to be lower. Depending on what y is, the economy may come closer to wealth equality, but it will never improve purely by redistribution. It can't. This is formally impossible.

Now something can happen, like wealth can be redistributed to build a road, and this road could allow for more efficient commerce. However the production of this road, by necessity, cost more than it would have had it been built by the market itself. The utility that is generated is not generated by the road, but by the market. The market would have generated utility either way but now it has to absorb the cost of the road. There is an increase in productivity but it costs more than it needed to (which is to say it has a cost at all. If two parties exchange something voluntarily, it is because both perceived a gain to me made. Hence the construction of the road is a positive utility outcome for both parties, and the use of the road allows future utility generation. When the government constructs the road, the construction of the road is a negative utility outcome. Although the use of the road still allows for future utility generation, the cost of the road must be absorbed by the market as someone was not happier to allocate their money there than they were somewhere else.)

So there you go. Using that you should be able to figure out, legitimately, why Socialistic countries can have high standards of living or be considered desirable to live in. Now please, stop using the wrong reasoning just because it's fashionable.

[lord_carbo]

Re: Communist Views

However the production of this road, by necessity, cost more than it would have had it been built by the market itself. [...] the cost of the road must be absorbed by the market as someone was not happier to allocate their money there than they were somewhere else.

it's important to note that this is not to say that the societal marginal benefits of a new road don't exceed the marginal costs. It's just that the private market is not a good generator of public goods.

You know the coase theorem, right? That's a good starting point. The coase theorem says that externalities can be managed most utilitarian-like in an economy without transaction costs.

Except, there are transaction costs. Which is why it makes sense that government builds roads.

It doesn't necessarily follow that since the private market can't produce roads, roads should not be produced. Each individual does not reap the full benefits of a road, but it is still better off being made because society benefits a lot. By the coase theorem, without transaction costs, the right amount of roads would be made because roads are generally just giant externalities that private entities reap little of. But there are transaction costs, making government a nice facilitator of roads.

For example, in a society of 10,000 people, the marginal utility of building a road may be -1000, and the marginal utility gained from that road may be 1 for each person. So in order for the road to be built, you need at least 1001 people to divvy out the costs evenly, and then every person in the society, all 10,000, will gain 1 utility. But because of transaction costs, it's nearly impossible to get 1001 people to cooperate. So government is efficient in that sense. That's basically how it works in the real world.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Communist Views

I'm not sure I follow. I am not familiar with the Coase theorem. How are roads externalities? How does the government alleviate transaction costs, and why does it do it better than any other third party?

Deriving the utility of a road as some fraction of the utility generated by the market in the presence of the road, given infinite time it would seem to generate infinite utility, minus upkeep costs. The same however is not only true of all basic infrastructure but indeed almost anything. A house, or a car, or what have you. Now in practice there naturally must come a certain point where obsolescence or whatever raises upkeep costs beyond the threshold of utility generated. However I suppose my contention would be, virtually any expenditure at all by government could seem to be justified as a positive utility outcome by the logic given.

Simultaneously this raises the issue of time preference; IE, investment. You don't need 1001 people to build the road. Principally you just need one person with 1001 dollars, who is willing to spend them on the road now in order to have 2002 dollars twenty or thirty or seventy years from now. The incentive for absorbing the cost of cooperation is expected future gain.

It would also seem to me, that even in the case where cooperation is more expensive than coercion in a strictly material fashion, the initial objection is not actually countered. That is to say, if people voluntarily pay more than they would have had they been coerced into paying for something, it is still a contrast between a positive utility outcome and a negative utility outcome for the transaction, as it doesn't technically matter how much people pay for something. If all parties view it as a gain, then they all gain, regardless of material cost.

The government could certainly lower material cost, but if it can only do so by coercion then there is by definition a negative utility outcome. I would also like to know how the costs involved in the processes of taxation, planning, etc. are intrinsically lower than the costs involved in getting the cooperation of however many people necessary to build a road. It seems like in some cases the cost of intervention would outweigh the transaction costs of the market and hence not even the material cost would be lower.

This is interesting though, and I certain don't object to it in it's entirety. The Wikipedia article mentioned the legal system, and I think that's a good place for this type of reasoning. When penalties are assessed against people by the law, that's naturally (and definitionally) a negative utility outcome as well. However there are obvious costs associated with, say, not imprisoning a maniac killer. So there are cases I think where actions which subtract from overall utility can be justified, but principally I would argue that this has to be a last resort, and it has to be in cases where the issue is not an absence of material or utile gain but a presence of material or utile loss. Hence I don't think roads should be handled by government even in cases where this would present a lower material cost than the market itself could deliver.

[Cavernio]

Re: Communist Views

I really have to be here more often if I'm going to say all the pertinent things that come into my head, so I'm just going to try and get a few in.

First of all, I clearly didn't know what communism, as a label, was, because I somehow managed to imagine it without it being something 'centrally located', but as something much more utopian, like a children's book about sharing and getting along. When I ask myself whether communism is possible without having everything state controlled, I say no, because then I don't think it's called communism anymore. However, I'll leave all that to another post some other time, maybe.

Kilroy and I have gotten into arguments before, and one thing I did concede was the main point it seemed she is making throughout these posts: a government can never decide what's best for everyone. What follows is that capitalism inherently works in the opposite way, because it is individuals who decide what they want for themselves, it will work better.
What I have a problem with is that a capitalist society not just allows for inequality, it absolutely supports it. Yes, us in north america have it great. For countries who have not grown economically as fast as us, businesses take full advantage with things like sweat shops and disparaties in the value of different nation's currency. I mean, if we had slaves, the non-slaves wealth would also be really good. I want to explore better options for humanity than this.

"Yes, a nationalized healthcare system can provide everybody with healthcare. This is not because nationalized services are more efficient."
You are wrong. You go on to talk about a formula and demonstrate it, while acknowledging it's oversimplification. Rule #1 in a social science: any math used to explain something will never be complex enough to explain it properly. My experience is is that it can be so far off that it's more of a hindrance than a help. When that formula was developed, it was a model, and a representation. You are presenting it the other way round though, that we must follow that model.

In any case, centrally run healthcare, when comparing the US and Canada, is far more efficient, and yes, because it truly is more efficient.* My brother has worked the past 10 years in a consulting company who has worked on systems in both Canada and the US, on various aspects of healthcare. He has seen, first hand, the costs of healthcare. And he's told me, more than once, that the cost of running healthcare and related services in the states is waaay more than in canada. Why? Because there's much less duplication of work in a centrally run system. In this case, the largest duplication of work was insurance companies that each have their own beaurocracy and paperwork. Of course, the fact that increased costs in healthcare comes largely from insurance is sweetly ironic in this discussion. Insurance companies make profit from a group of very willing people paying monthly fees for services they may never use. Not only do people who can afford it already pay a 'tax' for healthcare, (and from my understanding, you're nuts not to have it) but it doesn't even go directly into the paying for their 'care' at all. The profit made just goes to people who are using capitalism to make money while not actually offering a service.

When I say that insurance companies don't actually offer a service, it is because their service only exists because of capitalism. Kilroy has claimed that there will be way too much effort by a centrally run nation into figuring out who gets what. (Note that before I've already agreed that it is impossible for a centrally run system to figure out what people actually want in what quantities where.) However, what has not been mentioned is the flipside into all the extra work people do because of capitalism. Insurance companies are one of them. Advertising is another. Ok, well, not ALL advertising would go away with communism, but there certainly wouldn't be nearly as much. I'm positive there are more, very common jobs that exist purely because capitalism exists, but I hate business and haven't bothered to learn about it. I've definitely seen more blatant examples of capitalist 'busy-work' though. I know factories who are run by people who want to do good for their community, who will purposefully keep people employed rather than update their machinery. I can't blame them for what they do, but that that situation should ever occur is stupid, plain and simple. Kinda like insurance.

*Assuming that people actively try to find better ways to do things, the free market (or as much of it as we actually have), itself demonstrates that centrally run things are often much more efficient. Companies grow and are managed in a top-down way...that's how business works. Of course, when the market does manage great effiency like this, it turns into a monopoly, where we basically have a government-like corporation instead. This is my perception of things, and why I like my government and socialism. I'd rather have government than corporation.

Also, it's blatantly obvious that Devonin has a raging hard-on for you Kilroy.

[Cavernio]

Re: Communist Views

I've just thought of more things to add. Firstly, there are plenty of other jobs that, again, exist purely because of capitalism, and that effort could be put towards more productive things. The stock market is the biggest one that I can't imagine I didn't think of earlier. Along with that goes banking, financial advisors and taxes. These are all positions which exist because we're capitalist.

Another bonus to not being capitalist would be that there would be no reason to swindle anyone. The example that came to mind is actually swindling on a large scale, and is also affecting the quality of research we do. It's the pharmaceutical industry. Anyone in a medical or biological field knows to be very critical as to where money for research has come, and if a person writing an artical is actively being paid money by a company to portray a drug or treatment in better light than was actually shown. Without money though, there'd be no incentive beyond personal glory (which I don't think there'd be much of since no one would know who you were anyways), to spruce up results of drug therapies. There'd also be no reason for manufacturers to make fake drugs, put brand-name labels on them, and sell them worldwide, while people die because they think they're taking their medication when they're not.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Communist Views

What I have a problem with is that a capitalist society not just allows for inequality, it absolutely supports it. Yes, us in north america have it great. For countries who have not grown economically as fast as us, businesses take full advantage with things like sweat shops and disparaties in the value of different nation's currency. I mean, if we had slaves, the non-slaves wealth would also be really good. I want to explore better options for humanity than this.

You're comparing the voluntary exchange of goods and services to involuntary labor.

You're right though, there is inequality in capitalism. People gain at unequal rates. That's not something to cry about.

You are wrong.

Show me.

You go on to talk about a formula and demonstrate it, while acknowledging it's oversimplification. Rule #1 in a social science: any math used to explain something will never be complex enough to explain it properly.

First of all, this is an example of why social science isn't science. Second of all, Economics isn't a social science, it's the study of the distribution of goods and services.

When I said it was an oversimplification I mostly meant that it represents everyone's "share" of the total cost of redistribution equally, when this is not the case. Some people pay more than others. Some don't pay anything at all.

My experience is is that it can be so far off that it's more of a hindrance than a help. When that formula was developed, it was a model, and a representation. You are presenting it the other way round though, that we must follow that model.

I don't actually know what you're saying. Outside of the issue of uneven redistribution cost, there's absolutely nothing there to object to. The formula represents the nature of material wealth.

Why? Because there's much less duplication of work in a centrally run system. In this case, the largest duplication of work was insurance companies that each have their own beaurocracy and paperwork. Of course, the fact that increased costs in healthcare comes largely from insurance is sweetly ironic in this discussion. Insurance companies make profit from a group of very willing people paying monthly fees for services they may never use. Not only do people who can afford it already pay a 'tax' for healthcare, (and from my understanding, you're nuts not to have it) but it doesn't even go directly into the paying for their 'care' at all. The profit made just goes to people who are using capitalism to make money while not actually offering a service.

Redundancy isn't the difficulty with insurance companies. In fact it can't be. The existence of Coke doesn't make Pepsi more expensive, it makes it less expensive because of competitive pressure. Same thing with the existence of different insurance companies. The fact that there are a large number of people providing ostensibly the same service doesn't actually mean anything, and it certainly doesn't cost anyone anything extra.

Part of the difficulty is that there's regulation that requires insurance companies to have a certain amount of money on hand. They are required to be able to pay for services for a larger number of people at any given time than they would ever need to. As a result of this, they have to charge more, and since they have to charge more people that would have been customers under market conditions suddenly aren't.

As for your last complaint, I don't even know. There are a lot of services that aren't payed for directly by the people that use them. Isn't this something you're trying to pass of as a virtue of centrally organized economics? Their care is payed for, nobody cares if it's directly or not, it's completely absurd to claim that no service is being provided here.

However, what has not been mentioned is the flipside into all the extra work people do because of capitalism. Insurance companies are one of them. Advertising is another. Ok, well, not ALL advertising would go away with communism, but there certainly wouldn't be nearly as much.

It doesn't formally matter whether or not people work more, if they do it of their own free will. You're forgetting, people get payed to work. In fact the desirability of job creation is often a principal argument made by supply-siders. What you're committing is basically something like a reverse broken window fallacy, which is kind of amazing. As if the mere existence of windows, by entailing the possibility of work for the cobbler and the glass maker and the baker, somehow represents a negative utility outcome. Good job, you're insane.

I'm positive there are more, very common jobs that exist purely because capitalism exists, but I hate business and haven't bothered to learn about it.

Sentences like these make me wonder if you aren't just wasting my time. Sure there are jobs that exist purely because of capitalism. It's pretty close to all of them. The existence of things like professional athletes, and cinema critics, and porn stars, and stock market speculators however reflects on the success of capitalism as a means of wealth creation. People wouldn't pay for porn if they couldn't afford food. If they ever stop, it won't be a sign of economic prosperity.

I've definitely seen more blatant examples of capitalist 'busy-work' though. I know factories who are run by people who want to do good for their community, who will purposefully keep people employed rather than update their machinery. I can't blame them for what they do, but that that situation should ever occur is stupid, plain and simple.

What?

Companies grow and are managed in a top-down way...that's how business works.

No, business works when one company finds a market, either by establishing its own niche or else outcompeting another due to one form or another of superiority. Central management is just one example of a way to run a business. Whether it is more efficient or not is determined in the bottom line of each individual business.

Of course, when the market does manage great effiency like this, it turns into a monopoly, where we basically have a government-like corporation instead. This is my perception of things, and why I like my government and socialism. I'd rather have government than corporation.

Why? If a company outcompetes another without any sort of coercive etiology, it's a direct mark of their success at providing a valuable good or service. If there were any monopolies in a free market it could only be because the company in question was damn near perfect.

Also, what? If Ford Motor Company or Walmart became the only auto-maker/wholesale retailer in the country or even the world, they wouldn't become government. Why would they? What would they be doing? How exactly would this transition work?

I admit that there are cases in which private companies and government are equally capable of generating a given externality, but the principal distinction now and forever is that while both could generate it in the future, only government comes with an upfront negative utility cost in the form of the coercion it takes for it to operate.

Effectively, you are saying that if you have to choose between following two people with power, and you know that both could use that power to hurt you, you would rather go with the person with a history of violence.

I've just thought of more things to add. Firstly, there are plenty of other jobs that, again, exist purely because of capitalism, and that effort could be put towards more productive things. The stock market is the biggest one that I can't imagine I didn't think of earlier. Along with that goes banking, financial advisors and taxes.

For God's sake, read a book.

Anyone in a medical or biological field knows to be very critical as to where money for research has come, and if a person writing an artical is actively being paid money by a company to portray a drug or treatment in better light than was actually shown.

Well if everyone knows then what's the issue?

Without money though, there'd be no incentive beyond personal glory (which I don't think there'd be much of since no one would know who you were anyways), to spruce up results of drug therapies.

Great, so we just need people to work for free and be completely unaffected by and nonreliant on all material goods and services, and then we'll know they're honest.

Unless there's some complex psychological motivation that is. Gee, ok.

There'd also be no reason for manufacturers to make fake drugs, put brand-name labels on them, and sell them worldwide, while people die because they think they're taking their medication when they're not.

I don't even know where all this is coming from, but no, there would be. In fact there's more incentive to make non-working drugs when the government is in charge of development. Drugs are expensive to make. That's one of the principal reasons most drugs on the market are just rehashes of things that have already been developed, with slight trivial modifications. It doesn't help that regulation makes the development process more expensive and penalizes the development of legitimately new drugs.

Government isn't as worried about their brand name being associated with shoddy products, because they have guns and when all else fails they can use those to get their money, and not their products. A company can cheat. It can also fail. If a company fails people lose jobs. If a government fails people lose lives. It takes a lot more people down with it, because it can, and it will in the hopes of staying afloat as long as possible, even when its decisions have shown the people running it to be incompetent and dangerous. It's not even an issue of malevolence, it will do this more often than not exactly because it thinks its existence is in the best interest of the people.

There are two things that could happen if government took it upon itself to develop drugs. First, they could be as lazy as drug makers currently are (thanks to regulation) and only make the same things. Second, they could become wildly excessive and market drugs even if they weren't safe or effective.

The first is more plausible. Also, drugs would probably have a higher material cost, but even if they didn't they would still be funded coercively.

So, to all that, no.

[Cavernio]

Re: Communist Views

"You're comparing the voluntary exchange of goods and services to involuntary labor."

Blackmail on a large scale is still blackmail. If your choice is to either work obscenely long hours for pitiful money compared to starving to death, you may consider it voluntary, but it can still be morally wrong. It most certainly isn't freedom. At first glance, yes, having the opportunity to live is better than nothing. But that company hinders bottom-up development that that community would have for itself.

"First of all, this is an example of why social science isn't science. Second of all, Economics isn't a social science, it's the study of the distribution of goods and services."

Let's not argue semantics.

"Redundancy isn't the difficulty with insurance companies. In fact it can't be. The existence of Coke doesn't make Pepsi more expensive, it makes it less expensive because of competitive pressure. Same thing with the existence of different insurance companies. The fact that there are a large number of people providing ostensibly the same service doesn't actually mean anything, and it certainly doesn't cost anyone anything extra."

I'm talking about actual work, not cost. Also, competition doesn't magically make producing anything cheaper except through motivation...to get more work done for cheaper.

"As for your last complaint, I don't even know. There are a lot of services that aren't payed for directly by the people that use them. Isn't this something you're trying to pass of as a virtue of centrally organized economics? Their care is payed for, nobody cares if it's directly or not, it's completely absurd to claim that no service is being provided here."

How not astute of you to not figure out any of the points I was trying to make there. 1) That insurance takes money from people when they may not get anything in return except for peace of mind is my way of saying that people, en masse, accept taxation, which is what a lot of people who support capitalism seem to despise most. For these people, their thinking is backwards because that tax would not even be necessary if it weren't for capitalism. 2) The fact that nobody cares whether their care is paid directly for or not is irrelevant. The fact that it is not means that there is extra work being made when there doesn't need to be. 'Busy work' is only good when the person wants to do it, in which case it's called art. 3) I specifically made the beginning sentence in my next paragraph explain my use of 'no service being provided'.

"It doesn't formally matter whether or not people work more, if they do it of their own free will."

OMG, but a capitalist system plays with someone's will to do things! It specifically adds an external motivator, money. It creates external motvation that's designed to 'out-motivate' one's own internal motivation in order to produce more goods and services. That's ****ing coersion!!!! I want to do things because of my own internal motivation, not money. Please tell me how this is wrong. God, it is totally impossible to break your perfect image of capitalism, because of how you define free will! You are specifically saying that whatever someone does in capitalism is always that person's free will. I will again point out that such a system easily uses blackmail, that when someone is blackmailed, they are freely given a choice between 2 unpleasent things. ****, anyone who's ever had a job where they had to do something they thought was wrong or else quit, knows what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that capitalism always does this, so don't bother arguing that it will. Capitalism does, however, give people specific motivation to give the least they can while getting the most they can. Internal motivation doesn't do that, not unless you're emotionless, or full of spite and revenge: most people aren't. What's worse, is that people who claim things like you do about capitalism and the economy, have the gall to rub it in that that person has a totally free choice in what they do, and tell them that that's good. You know what else is free will?? Disobeying the law. However, somehow having laws which motivate people to do/not do specific things takes away free will. You know what? I'd much rather have law outlining what I should and shouldn't do, which I know and can fight if I choose to, rather than have a manipulative system of capitalism, where everything's apparently always for the best, and it's so convoluted, fighting it is impossible.

"What you're committing is basically something like a reverse broken window fallacy, which is kind of amazing. As if the mere existence of windows, by entailing the possibility of work for the cobbler and the glass maker and the baker, somehow represents a negative utility outcome. Good job, you're insane."

At least you understand me here. What capitalism does is motivate someone to be a baker, glass maker, or cobbler, regardless of whether they want to be or not. Just because it does this, it does not mean that no having capitalism takes away these opportunities. What it gives them is opportunity to do things besides those jobs, because they do not have to worry about the money side of things.

"Great, so we just need people to work for free and be completely unaffected by and nonreliant on all material goods and services, and then we'll know they're honest."

I'm aware of my views. I said as much when I said that I'm imaging something like everyone sharing in a children's book. At least though, when we're fighting over material goods, there's one less layer of **** to shift through.