Socialism vs capitalism
Has the economic anarchy of capitalism produced the current status quo of 2/3rds of the world living below the poverty line? Can a centrally planned economy democratically and logically distribute resources, wealth, and labour of the world? Do all historically progressive tasks -such as the end of war and poverty- depend on the overcoming of the barriers erected by the profit system, the division of the world into rival and competing nation states and private ownership of the means of production?
Comments (71)
I'm a democratic socialist, so there's my bias. "Capitalism" is not a huge unitary entity. There are numerous players with often mutually exclusive aims -- hence the anarchy. Capitalist economies may be organized into blocks, like the G7. organized around shared values of pluralism, liberal democracy, and representative government. China is (some sort of quasi) capitalist country but it doesn't share the same values as the G7.
According to the world bank, 8% of the world's population (650 million) live in extreme poverty -- that is, they have less than US $2.15 to live on per day. Almost a quarter of the global population, 23 percent, lived below the US$3.65 poverty line, and almost half, 47 percent, lived below the US$6.85 poverty line, as reported in the 2022 Poverty and Shared Prosperity report (World Bank).
Capitalism IS responsible for the impoverished lives of many people who produce goods for export to the G7 and other countries. By contracting with ever cheaper capitalist operatives in 3rd world and developing countries, labor costs are driven to the absolute minimum--a level at which people in Bangladesh can not feed themselves.
Socialism has to be the shared system around the world if it were to make a significant difference. A few socialist countries here and there (even big ones) can't dismantle the capitalist system alone.
War and poverty have been around since Ur, a long time ago. Given that we are heading into a period of globally heated instability, I'm pretty sure there are going to be wars over ever diminishing necessities like fresh water, food, tolerable heat levels, and so on. From that point of view, I'm not sure any politico-economic system will be able to equitably administer the world's needs.
En-salad -- are you a socialist?
Not all by itself, but it's a major contributor. Other causes have been imperialism, superstition, technological disparity and climate.
Quoting an-salad
Of course, but people would first have to agree to hand over control - first to the UN, then to a central computing bank. They're unlikely to do that.
Quoting an-salad
That's too many items for this checkout. There were wars long before capitalism, long before the means of production was anything more than an old guy chipping arrowheads on a big rock. People have always fought over land, water, hunting rights, minerals, jealousy, anger, revenge and power. More recently, they've been fighting over crowns, near-identical deities and dominion over other peoples.
Poverty is caused by other factors than profit: overpopulating a confined territory, hunting prey to extinction, unfavourable natural conditions (flood, drought, locust swarm, potato blight) Rival and competing nations states are usually contesting territory, but sometimes a serious divergence of ideologies can also be in effect. Large-scale landowners and warring aristocrats were just as exploitive of the vulnerable classes as are supranational corporations.
I'm inclined to say that humanity's troubles are not caused by any particular human invention so much as the fact that humans keep coming up with destructive inventions.
Quoting Vera Mont
Arent all inventors both destructive and constructive? Isnt this true of knowledge in general?
I suppose one could find a constructive use for mace and the guillotine, but I'm hard-put to imagine what that is. My contention was that it's not one single invention [capital] that brings all the trouble, but the fact that we can't stop corrupting our inventions.
I'm inclined to say that humanities troubles are caused by our evolution from adaptable but short-sighted primates to overly clever, adaptable, and short sighted primates. We're good at inventing, but not projecting long-term consequences (like, longer than 15 minutes or 15 years). Our short-sightedness isn't a bug, it's a feature. Survival USUALLY is determined in the short run. In the long run, we're all dead. ("The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead, wrote John Maynard Keynes in his 1923 work, A Tract on Monetary Reform.")
The selfish gene wear blinkers. (But we're damn destructive in the short term, too.)
Whos to say what constitutes corruption? One persons corruption is anothers innovation. How to draw thr moral lines is far from clear.
For context, I think humans are lucky to do as well they do in Denmark.
Quoting Vera Mont
:up:
As a Cormac McCarthy character might put it, is it not weird that we dream of something more ? It's wrong for just one particular apex predator to compete (though we deserve our own new level, really).
We want to be safe, right ? That's the motive Hobbes gives for kings endlessly expanding their territory. Press any advantage and push that risk towards [math]0[/math]. Kill the little baby snakes while it's easier and safer.
I don't mean to wallow in this. Part of us loves it though. Community through the shared enemy. Unmitigated cruelty spurts freely, in an orgasm of pentup hate. .
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)00564-6
The game theory in The Selfish Gene stays with me. Dawkins wears the face of Nietzsche's Socratic optimism, but his 'ontology' is more like Schopenhauer's. Biological evolution is an amoral demiurge. David Pearce was great on this stuff. What I took from him is that lots of utopian ideologies don't strike at the root, which is to say the source code generated algorithmically by this 'demiurge.'
My question might be whether we can trust who we are now to program who we might become. It's not 100% crazy sci-fi to imagine a relatively immortal ruling class. Vampires will become real ? Or maybe a superstrain of humanity, not immortal but Better In Ovary Way.
Uummm... in a word: no. The percentage of wealth owned by the top 10% is essentially the same during the 1400s (a bit more than a century before capitalism was invented) and now. The only times when the top 10% had a major decrease in their percentage of wealth owned was during the Black Plague and the WW1/WW2 eras (one before capitalism and one during it).
Guillotines remain the go-to device for severing heads. Much more reliable than a hand held axe. Quicker than hanging. Etc. Now, as for severing heads, there is an abundance of heads which, severed from their bodies, would have beneficial effects on society. I can think of a few dozen right off.
The major drawback of the guillotine is excessive bleeding. The place d'severence was moved periodically, probably because the ground became saturated with varying degrees of noble blood. Now, of course, we would funnel the blood into sanitary sewers.
Heavily taxing wealth required an agreement among labor, capital, and politics. That agreement held until the early 1970s, when the highest tax levels began to be lowered, and various changes made it possible for the rich to again get much richer at the expense of the working class.
There is nothing inherent in Capitalism to bring about the Gilded Age of the 1880s or the current gilded age of multi-billionaires. It's the cooperation, yea--the facilitation--of government that makes this possible, or not.
Every human being on the planet. We punish one another enough for perceived immorality; the least we can do is acknowledge one another's moral compass.
Not to me.
Quoting Joshs
No, that's backward. Things are innovated by one person and corrupted by another. You cannot corrupt that which does not yet exist.
Quoting BC
So can I, but they're rarely the class that gets tumbrilled up to the scaffold. Anyhow, my secret desire for the destruction of someone or something I dislike does not turn it into construction.
Not exclusively, but capitalism plays a major role in creating a minority of 'haves' and a majority of 'have nots.' A massive, global, power and influence imbalance.
Quoting an-salad
Creating a global system which is more equitable and fair for all stakeholders must be possible. Central control, distributed control, localised control, all of the above, who cares? Probably trial and error and trying again until we get something that works, will continue to be the methodology. What is needed, is a majority will to create and maintain a global, secular, humanist, democratic, socialist system.
Quoting an-salad
Money was invented. War is a choice. Poverty is circumstantial or imposed. Nationhood is the result of stage by stage, co-operation. Competition is entertainment or is instinctive behaviour due to an inherent 'survival instinct.' Competition is really only necessary when resources cannot meet need.
I would ask simple questions:
1. Why does one human wish to be more powerful and have more wealth than any other?
Are such drives/motivations, 100% connected to our 'survival of the fittest, jungle rules, beginnings?'
If so, then what does the notion of 'civilisation,' really mean to humans?
2. Do you think 8 billion humans, fully co-operating, could achieve more than 8 billion humans competing
under the control of an elite global few?
3. Can the human species find common cause, when we consider the scale of the universe and the
resources available within it?
4. Consider unfettered capitalism in permanent action, forever unchallenged, what would you predict,
would be the main result of such a permanent global system, for our species?
Quoting Vera Mont
Im with Ken Gergens brand of social constructionism when it comes to issues of social justice and morality:
Actually, there are now less people living in absolute povetry than earlier.
Perhaps the reason isn't only capitalism. It might be also that China and India threw away old school socialism.
But we can always choose again socialism! :wink:
Probably because h. sapiens are about a chromosome and a half away from p. troglodytes (chimpanzees).
The history of h. sapiens' dominance hierarchies (i.e. civilizations, sovereigns / states, cults-communes) certainly suggests such a sociobiological "connection".
In practice dynastic-oligarchical dominance hierarchy.
No. Not under conditions (status quo) of political-economic scarcity.
We haven't yet in over half a century. It's certainly not in the interest of shareholders who profit from dominate by exploiting natural and/or man-made / strategic scarcities.
Eventually 'survival of the elitest' (millions, not billions) in scattered networks (sprawls) of AI-automated enclaves. Think: Ayn Randian dystopias à la Judge Dredd or Blade Runner (without Replicants).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/787957
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/801029
Nevertheless, we have those values, hold those convictions and make those judgments. Society cannot function in an ethical void.
If he has to 'intone' a credo, he probably has no confidence in it. Hypocrites quite regularly intone the 'correct' credo most popularly espoused by their society, while surreptitiously fracturing all of its tenets. By their actions shalt thou know them, not by their insincere words. By their actions can you also discern whether they are carrying out the dictates of true conviction or doing something quite else.
Let them hack one another and themselves to pieces, if that is their hearts' desire. I'll settle for a one-pointed pen.
Is this true?
Answer: No.
Contrasting capitalism to socialism is folly, instead, we should assume private ownership, and ask what level of government interventionism there is. Neoliberal capitalism is largely responsible for most of the issues people associate with capitalism, but really, we've been told a bunch of lies about what's needed for capitalism. Let's not underestimate human greed, even under very unfavourable and unfair conditions with high levels of government oversight, companies would retain their drive for profit and innovation.
The second question is the structure of the private ownership, contrasting what we have to co-ops etc.
Global inequality has been falling since the 90s and has fallen at a faster rate since 2019. But at the same time, the share of wealth held by the top 1% has also been steadily increasing. Both phenomena seem set to continue.
Although, I do wonder if the shift of population growth towards Sub-Saharan Africa might effect this trend in the long term. We will soon be in a world where the population is falling almost everywhere else; over 50% of human beings under age 18 are expected to live in SSA by 2100. I haven't heard as much about this as I'd expect.
Mathematically, it easier for the very poor to see huge 50-200% surges in annual earnings, as this can amount to all of $3-6 a day. Thus, looking at % growth rates in earnings can be fairly misleading.
In any event, measures of capitalism's effect on global inequality tend to ignore migration. Neo-liberalism was a main motivator behind the liberalization of immigration across the developed world. Migration has allowed millions of people from poorer nations to move to wealthier ones, dramatically boosting their earnings. The money they send home is not insignificant either. Remittances dwarf all foreign aid; people send a LOT of money back when they migrate away.
Capitalism can at least be cheered for this. Such migration has made inequality greater in wealthy nations and tended to hurt the living standards of the poor there, but it's been very beneficial for people from less wealthy nations. This is not a policy socialists embraced with open arms. Into the 1990s the left, particularly labor unions, paid a lot of attention to this; it's just that the "culture war" tended to place migrants and traditional socialists more and more on the "same team" over the 2000s. So, if capitalism is to blame for "exporting" its lower class as nations became more wealthy, it is as least also fair to praise it for motivating the opening of migration opportunities.
Of course, now we have a weird sort of blow back effect where high rates of migration are making people less willing to support socialist wealth redistribution, so who knows how that will all end up. It seems like sort of a positive feedback loop in favor of less socialism. Meanwhile, the process raises national inequality but lowers global inequality.
Exactly. As the West hasn't seen such rapid growth, we tend to miss just what a huge transformation has happened in China, the Far East and is happening in India. It's a fantastic development that people that has really faced large scale famine (and did experience a famine of 15 to 55 million deaths in 1959-1961) has prospered so much. All thanks to Chinese Marxism! :wink:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The hope would be, that after Asia, the economic growth would finally start in Africa. Yes, it starts with sweatshops and cheap labour, but hopefully similar development as in Asia would happen there too. Yet there are many problems that can make it not happen.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As do direct investments work. With Foreign aid I'm not so sure: it is basically drug addiction that doesn't make the countries better. In fact the now collapsed Republic of Afghanistan is a perfect example of just pouring money creates: rampant corruption and state that collapses. Before the collapse, 43% of the GDP of Afghanistan came from foreign aid. About 75% of public spending was funded by foreign aid grants. That is totally reckless, basically from the West that was responsible of this. Yet when you look at the countries that have really developed, really went from the verge of famine to an industrialized country, it hasn't happened because of foreign aid. Foreign markets, yes, but not aid.
Shanghai in 1990 and in 2010, just 20 years:
I'm neither a political Capitalist nor a political Socialist. Instead, I'm apolitical, and I happen to live in a regulated mixed economy, where my status is far above the world poverty line. My retirement Uber gig is "platform capitalism", where the workers are free to come & go, but their income remains near the bottom of the U.S. economic pyramid (not counting the unemployed)*1. At the same time, I benefit from socialist medicine (VA) because I gave four years of my life defending my less-than-perfect country. Although my income is near the bottom of the US scale, I don't consider myself impoverished, compared to the rest of the world --- much of which doesn't benefit from the political stability and moderation of a mixed economy*2.
I questioned the assertion that "2/3rds of the world living below the poverty line". So, I Googled "poverty line" and found a variety of estimates based on such criteria as "global data set on basic commodity prices to provide first estimates of global extreme poverty in the long run using a 'cost of basic needs' approach"*3. Proponents of Capitalism like to boast of the millions of people "raised out of historical poverty". As illustrated in the chart below *5. But, do you trust the data and criteria of Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.?
A major factor in world poverty seems to be, not so much Capitalism vs Socialism, as the political stability of the government. Capitalism flourishes with minimal regulation, but benefits mostly those near the top of the pyramid, and tends toward Oligarchism. Socialism depends on top-down suppression of the acquisitive motives of human nature, but tends toward Totalitarianism. Yet, a blend of both approaches seems to moderate the worst of each system, while allowing enough sociopolitical freedom to avoid the poverty rates of Ancient Rome for example*4. I'm just trying to put the current world economy into a broader perspective --- not either/or but BothAnd. Marx's philosophy may have had more impact on poverty than his politics. :smile:
*1. Gig employment vs poverty :
Thirty-two percent of drivers in the study reported falling into a debt trap; given the costs of an Uber lease, car insurance and Uber's 25 percent commission and booking fees, some drivers net less than $5 an hour. Half of drivers live at or below the federal poverty level.
https://today.advancement.georgetown.edu/georgetown-magazine/2020/is-uber-taking-its-drivers-for-a-ride/
Note --- My part-time gig income averages around high minimum wage : $25/hr
*2. Mixed Economy :
A mixed economic system is a system that combines aspects of both capitalism and socialism. A mixed economic system protects private property and allows a level of economic freedom in the use of capital, but also allows for governments to interfere in economic activities in order to achieve social aims.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mixed-economic-system.asp
*3. Global extreme poverty: Present and past since 1820 :
Based on our methodology, the global poverty rate fell below 70% in 1873, and below 60% by 1897; after that, it takes much longer to drop below 50% by 1955, then much less time to drop below 40% by 1977.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e20f2f1a-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/e20f2f1a-en
*4. Ancient Poverty :
Their society may have consisted of a handful of wealthy individuals which made up 0.6% of the population, an army that made up 0.4% of the population, and the poor masses that made up 99% of the populace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_ancient_Rome
*5. HISTORY OF WORLD POVERTY SINCE 1800
Marx's critique of unregulated Capitalism published in 1867.
https://cepr.shorthandstories.com/history-poverty/
I'm somewhat skeptical of the massive figures thrown around as the "death toll," for Marxism. Russia has massive famines under the Tsars shortly before the advent of the Soviet Union. Russia was a backwards nation before WWI began and took the largest number of losses in that war. Then the Russian Civil War that followed was 3-5 times more deadly than the Great War. It left Russia in an absolute shambles.
Not that this cuts against all the ample evidence that some famines in the USSR were essentially intentional, wielded as tools of genocide by Stalin. It's simply that there is little reason to think a Democratic government or market economy would have avoided famines either. Indeed, food scarcity was a major issue when the Bolsheviks overthrew the democratic regime. Famines did also end in the former Russian empire under communism, following the Second World War. The same is true for China.
China is an even less obvious case. China was in a brutal civil war from 1911 through 1950. The scale of the war is such that it is normally covered as multiple wars, the Warlord Era broken out from the KMT and CCP struggles and the Japanese invasion, but by itself it might be the deadliest war in human history.
China was incredibly impoverished in 1950. It was still fighting civil wars as it fought the US in Korea, and would be fighting insurgencies into the 60s when it fought the Soviets. [B]China's population growth has basically stagnated since 1791, a century and a half of little growth due to extremely high infant mortality, waves of famine, and brutal warfare. By Mao's death, China's population had more than doubled, China had held its own in wars against the USA and USSR, and the PRC was one of a handful of nations with space launch capabilities, nuclear weapons, and hydrogen bombs, which it made domestically ahead of many "great powers."[/b]
This is not to ignore Mao's atrocious peacetime leadership, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, but to point out that the base case was likely one with as much death, perhaps more due to instability. If the KMT had won, famine, massive corruption, and misrule would definitely be a part of China's post war history. It's statistically dubious to talk about "55 million," excess deaths in China at a time when its population was skyrocketing after a long period of stagnation. It seems like it's enough to simply document that Mao knew enough to understand what his policies were doing and kept doing them anyhow.
Plus, if the deaths in these war racked previously totalitarian nations is indicative of the socialism as a whole then British rule over massive famines and the mass death of the Partition might as well be an "effect of capitalism." Did capitalism save India from famines? Did it save Ireland? Even with a surge in migration, Ireland's population is still significantly lower today than it was in the mid-19th century, when it collapsed as the British exported food during an apocalyptic famine because it fetched a higher price on the continent. We'd also have to add in the slave trade, the genocide of native tribes across the Americas, the particularly atrocious conditions of slaves on Haiti, etc. to the results of market liberalism.
Point being, Russia and China are bad examples because they were absolute basket cases before communism and in many ways improved despite communism, while it's unclear that any system could have avoided their problems.
Of course, you have the best example of Marxism-Leninism in the example of East-Germany and how it compared to West-Germany. It didn't experience famine and didn't experience massive purges, even if it had a large security state. Germans really showed just where you could make of Marxist-Leninist socialism. And we really have to remember that the most successful version of socialism has been with social-democracy, which is still quite alive an kicking in the Western World. Social Democrats have ruled many Western countries and are and inherent part of Western democracy just as are conservatives.
I think it isn't even just related to Communist revolutions but overall to revolutions: just how bloody or bloodless they can be differs. The French Revolution compared to American Revolution is the best example I can think of. Both countries had to fight foreign armies ("foreign" perhaps in the US case), but only one had internal terror.
When you have radicals in control that share a firm belief that they can better the World by killing the "bad" people, then there is no end to the piles of bodies they leave behind them. Pol Pot is a good example, but so is the Holodomor.
And when you have these killers then reading Marx, they will interpret Communist Revolution literally meaning that you have to kill the bourgeois, kill the rich, in order for the class struggle to succeed. Heaven forbid if you then are defined as "rich", a "kulak" or an "enemy of the state". The similar kinds of people can read the Koran and have their own ideas what fighting the "Jihad" means and would happily kill the unbelievers. Even Christianity has had this with it's Crusades, which really is a bizarre feat to pull out from the teachings of Jesus Christ, and all those time people wanted to build "The New Jerusalem".
Agreed. The best examples of socialism are those where it sublated/subsumed liberal democracy and the best examples of liberal democracy are those where it sublated socialism. It's a sort of hybrid vigor.
Right, lol. It's the sort of "reverse Tower of Babel," bringing heaven down to Earth, that Dostoevsky burns the socialists on in the Grand Inquisitor.
Far from it. There is no anarchy. From the largest trade routes to the smallest transactions, from the global to the local level, pretty much any move we make is regulated by a litany of state policy. Vast legal systems, treaties, trade agreements, jurisdictions, global financial institutionsthese are the fetters of state and statist intervention, and their combined reach is global in scale.
I would also say that the claim that there is private ownership is a myth, used as it is to disguise the reality that we have hardly left the state of serfdom. To purchase some means of production, like land for instance, one cannot just go out and stake an area for private use and claim jurisdiction. It's only "private" if the state allows it to be, which isn't saying much because they can come and take it any time they want. Rather, we are obliged to live on their land, more like a fief, over which they have supreme jurisdiction, rights, and control. And through various schemes of taxation they take a share of our labor in exchange for a paltry series of protections, from military to welfare. This is modern feudalism.
Exactly. Socialism isn't at odds with capitalism. And there are no (real) leftists anymore, so the issue is settled for all practical purposes. For now.
When the ends justify the means. Do you think there's a time when they do?
The words of someone who has never dealt with managing a project that actually involves using eminent domain. The DoD has a family farm literally in the middle of a bombing range and has spent millions of dollars working around it due to an ongoing court battle over the land. The state can't just seize any land they want in liberal democracies. The state loses eminent domain cases all the time. Taxpayer projects often go 10-20% or more over budget because the state can't get the optimal land required for some public good.
I'd also ask, if, to have "real private property," we need to be able to walk out onto land and "stake a claim to it," what exactly stops anyone else from staking a claim to [I]your[/I] land? Where are you going where someone else can't claim that their ancestors owned your land at some point? Isn't it a problem that all the arrable land on Earth has been staked for centuries?
Also, when was the last time the state came by and seized you or any family member's car or stripped you of your clothing so they could take it? Have you ever come home to see that the state had seized your house? When the state does seize property, is there a recourse for it? Something like saying, a court and a jury?
Military protections only seen paltry if you haven't been in a war. Go ask any farmers in Ukraine whose land is on the front line how well their property rights are doing lol. Property rights mean nothing if one side has rights and the other has artillery. No military, no property rights. I am not aware of any pacifist nations ever surviving without the backing of some larger military power that can enforce a peace.
Yes. I'm not sure we've learned anything after all our species has been through.
Not only eminent domain, but civil forfeiture, taxation, tariffs, subsidies, minimum wages, welfare, regulation, and so on. Wherever the state takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong, there you have plunder, and that is the nature of the business of your lord.
That a law like the 5th amendment and courts make the process of theft more difficult for the state, none of that, nor your authority on project management, negate the intents and efforts to take what isn't theirs and give to whom it does not belong. The courts are still beholden to the same laws as devised by the state, and eminent domain or some version thereof is present in every liberal democracy. In Canada it is "expropriation". In Australia it is "compulsory acquisition". These words do not mean nothing.
At any rate, one only needs to look at who has jurisdiction over the land and who is sovereign over it. As per the Supreme Court, eminent domain "requires no constitutional recognition; it is an attribute of sovereignty." In all cases wherever property is concerned, the sovereign entities are invariably states. They can and have walked into people's homes and they can and have taken people's things.
Look at what the sovereign entities do in order to protect their jurisdiction from the invasion of another. They defend it with force wherever required. Why do men in power deserve to be sovereign over their land and get to do whatever they want with the serfs that live on it, but others do not?
That's disturbing considering what happened next. Why does world politics look like the 19th Century?
Especially post-WW2 Cold War got world politics to look to be two sided. Now it's really getting back to being multipolar. Also in the way that so-called allies of one camp can be found meddling in some third countries internal politics being on different sides. Something that would have been unheard of during the Cold War. You have simply more independent and active participants.
A lord holds their power by birth or through conquest. I don't recall the last time I saw local officials conquering more than a free lunch platter. If we're going to define "any one exercising state power" as a "lord" then sure, we're in feudalism. But only trivially, and only because we've decided to define "government exists" as "feudalism."
Right, because a state face trade-offs. Does the state spend twice as much on a road, taxing everyone else more because you won't part with your land at the market appraised value, or do they force you to sell? Do they let a private dam fail and wash out people's homes because the owner doesn't want to repair it and won't let the state intervene, or do they tell the owner "tough shit, you can't let people's homes get washed away."
One person's land use affects another's.
If you like to fish and "lay claim" to part of a river, and I build a factory on the same river and then fill the river with toxic sludge, killing off all your fish, who arbitrates between us? If you build yourself a nice quiet country retreat and I open up a punk rock venue next door and have massive keg fueled ragers until 5 AM every weeknight, who arbitrates between us?
Absolute freedom is a contradiction. A world without states isn't a world of freedom because anyone who can take anything from someone else is free to do so. Being free means being free to deprive others of their freedom. Lay claim to all the land you want, say "this is mine," what does it change if a bunch of armed men decide your stuff is theirs and you work for them now? It matters not one bit. Hence, people accepting the state, because the state increases freedom.
The lord who is lord by virtue of force isn't free either. They can't stop being a lord who is ready and able to use force to get their way. The second they do, someone will replace them-- they will no longer be lord. And so, they are constrained by such a system as well.
Likewise, good luck keeping roads working or solving a host of other collective action problems without the state. You have streets in extremely rich neighborhoods in the Boston area, all multi-million-dollar properties, where the road has basically ceased to exist because it is a private way and no one a can agree on pooling their money to repave it. The person in front wants to pay less because "they use less of the road," the person in the back wants everyone to split the cost, and of course, they all want to state to step in and take over the road and have the taxpayer pay.
But, certainly having an interstate highway system offers a type of freedom. Currently, I could hop in my car and drive from here to Alaska on quality roads, with nary a fear of highway men, nor any fear of price gouging on gas in remote areas. No, "oh, so sorry, the closest other gas station is 90 miles away. I see you are on empty. That will be $45 a gallon." That's a certain type of freedom, and it's not one you get without the state.
So, of course, no one is entirely free in any respect, the state is a constraint, but it also enables freedom. You can grab a piece of paper and draw any shape you'd like, but if you draw a triangle, you're no longer free to have drawn a square. If you eat your cake, you can't save it. There is no absolute freedom. But relatively, the state helps with freedom, and relatively, I'd much rather be a citizen in Canada today than a serf in 1000s Provance.
Believe it or not neighbors can deliberate with one another without the need of any state authority and men can design and build infrastructure without being a state employee. In fact, the state more often than not contracts out these duties to private entities.
But by now were so inured to state power that it is always assumed they have to be involved, I guess as the sole arbiter of right and wrong, while anyone who is not a state employee must have too smooth of a brain to function in such a manner. For some reason it has become a truism, rather a myth, that only man in his official form can lay asphalt or protect others from bandits, as if state officials are a different species. The problem is no one can ever answer why these duties can only be accomplished by state employees.
As for collective action, there is nothing collective about state activity. Ive never once been consulted about roads or bandits. Have you? These sorts of decisions are never collective, but are invariably decided by a cabal of politicians, officials, and their bagmen.
And no wonder people cannot band together to fix a simple road; they have been taught their whole lives that people cannot, nor should not do so. No wonder people cannot band together to help the poor in their community, or fix potholes, because theyve been taught their whole lives that they do not need to bother, that we can let some politicians and officials take our money and they will handle it for us.
I do not believe that any significant proportion of human beings will turn into bandits and murderers as soon as they find themselves free to do so. Ive met enough people to conclude otherwise. But the state has long captured and monopolized so many of the simple duties and responsibilities that we have to one another that we no longer even need to care for others in our community. The state will do it for us. Thats not freedom and independence. Thats dependency and slavery. Thats how you raise a race of irresponsible human beings and I fear were long past that point.
Most infrastructure projects are examples of natural monopolies. You're not going to build two parallel power grids, two sets of roads, two sets of sewer systems, etc. Without government, who stops the monopolist from charging whatever is best for them for electricity, gas, etc? There are reasons that government heavily regulates or runs certain types of industry, natural monopoly is the primary one.
Yes. Roads and crime are both covered by local government. It's very easy to get meetings with city councilors in most places I've lived, you can just call their cell phones. The last city I lived in had a roads committee that has public speakout time scheduled at monthly meetings, and people came to speak about roads, normally getting their private ways converted, almost every full city council meeting. The police force had bi-weekly neighborhood meetings on crime. I still get annoying texts about them.
The Feds mostly are in the business of simply giving funds to state and local governments to spend, and public input is part of the planning process for any major road project I've seen.
Have you ever driven in a developing country? Roads aren't well funded there. They didn't grow up with the government "babying" them by always taking care of the roads. And yet... the roads remain shit.
Well, as opposed to your anecdotal "I think most people are nice," I would just point out that the estimated murder rate for humans in hunter gatherer societies is around 2,000 per 100,000. This is over 10 times higher than the most violent countries on Earth today. It's higher than many war zones; the equivalent of America seeing 6.6 million murders in a year. In such a societies, 1 in every 5 human males who make it to adulthood will die in combat of some sort.
This isn't suprising. It's about the murder rate we see in similar species and synchs up with data on extant hunter gatherers. Chimpanzees also have wars. Studies of hunter gather societies that made it into the 20th century found that raids, mass murder, rape, and slavery/thralldom were essentially endemic. Forensic anthropology converges on similar figures.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19758
Oxford, a well off area with a high number of priests had a homicide rate of 110 per 100,000 in the 1340s, several times worse than the worst American cities today.
Essentially, as you go back in time homicide rates are massively higher than today. State development and state monopoly on force is the primary factor indicated in this shift.
So, if people killed each other in massive numbers before civilization, why would they agree to get along without any enforcement mechanisms today. Seems like a wild supposition. Who is even going to sign any sort of long term contract if there is no court to make people live up to their contracts?
You see freedom as only "lack of limits on my behavior." This is naive. There is also "the freedom to have safe roads," the "freedom to have safe drinking water," the "freedom to be educated." If you only think of freedom in terms of negative freedom, no one telling you what you can't do, then of course the state is monstrous. But this is to ignore the actual context we live in.
We live in a world of trade offs. Conscription takes away men's freedom. But in the context of the American Civil War, conscription was necessary to end slavery. Given the losses the Confederacy was able to bear, about 1/5th of Southern males killed, the only path to victory for the Union was large scale conscription. You can see the same thing in plenty of other cases.
No charity has ever offered universal education; only the state has done this. Companies don't keep drinking water safe out of the goodness of their hearts. On the contrary, firms appear to pollute as much as they can without the state stopping them. Now if you grow up drinking water suffused with lead and are now cognitively impaired, are you "free to become a doctor?" No. You can't pass the exams because of brain damage from heavy metal exposure. But if I, a factory owner up the street, am free to do as I please, I might very well dump lead into your water.
I am incredulous than anyone actually thinks firms won't pollute without the state punishing them for it.
Right, one has to go and prostrate oneself before those in power and practically beg in order to have any input. But you'll note that the state moves swiftly towards any project that accrues to its own benefit, like war for instance, while it moves slowly and only under great pressure towards anything that accrues towards the people's benefit.
Political scientist RJ Rummel estimated that around 212 million people were killed by governments during the 20th century alone, spawning his notion of "democide". The world wars, the various genocides, the instances of mass slave labor, were largely conceived in the civilized minds of those with state power. I'm much more comfortable with the homicide rates of hunter gatherer societes than I am with the murder on an industrial scale produced by those in authority. No hunter-gatherer has ever dropped a nuke on people, as far as I know.
I actually have travelled the world in my time during my youth and have seen the shit roads, and I would argue that this was because their governments are shit, not because they have any higher degree of freedom. I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. Countries that are higher in degrees of freedom, at least according to the Human Freedom Index, tend to have better infrastructure than the ones who employ more coercive measures on their own people. But I don't care about any of that. I'm not a utilitarian.
The state not only has the monopoly on violence, but also the monopoly on crime. It can get away with levels of murder, theft, fraud, that if any of us were to commit we'd be sentenced to death and rightfully so. There is not a single line in their own constitutions and charters that they have not violated. So I'm unconvinced that they are any sort of legitimate authority or that they deserve any power in the first place, and I certainly wouldn't push all that aside because I enjoy a comfier drive on my way to Alaska.
Countries with the Highest Human Freedom Indexes (2021):
Switzerland 9.11
New Zealand 9.01
Denmark 8.98
Estonia 8.91
Ireland 8.90
Canada 8.85
Finland 8.85
Australia 8.84
Sweden 8.83
Countries with the Highest Tax Rates in The World in 2023
Aruba.
Sweden.
Austria.
Denmark.
Japan.
Finland.
Quality of port infrastructure (2006 - 2019)
Singapore 6.5
Finland 6.4
Netherlands 6.4
Hong Kong 6.3
Denmark 5.8
Japan 5.8
Panama 5.7
Belgium 5.6
Estonia 5.6 9
USA 5.6
South Korea 5.5
UA Emirates 5.5
Iceland 5.4
Qatar 5.4
Spain 5.4
Taiwan 5.4
Sweden 5.3
:chin:
Also, Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai are high in wealth disparity.
Iron-fisted authoritarianism and socialism works wonderfully. You do what you're told when you're told ie. farm this, build this, do this etc, etc, and say if something goes wrong ie. bad harvest due to bad weather, someone steals what you've built (and if you are found to be complicit in this 'theft' you will be punished severely), the powers that be sigh, and give you enough food, water, and resources to survive regardless.
There's definitely pros and cons to both. Unfortunately in one system injustices are known to rarely ever see the light of day...
How come you only bolded those three countries? Whats the argument?
No argument. Just pointing out that the bolded countries are at the top of the list for high taxes, also top of the human freedom index list, and top of the list for quality infrastructure. I'll now add that they're at the bottom of the wealth gap list.
So why not Switzerland or the Netherlands or the Ivory Coast or Singapore?
I can't bold those countries if they're not listed, obviously. None of them are in the top 6 countries with the highest taxes, for instance. The Ivory Coast is not listed at all.
I've just extended the courtesy of italicizing those countries in the list for you, however. What does it indicate?
I haven't been to these places, so I have no opinion on their infrastructure. But Dubai is 1588 square miles; Monaco has <1 square mile; Bahamas is the giant among the 3 with 5358 square miles, but is spread out over 700 islands. Whatever their assets and liabilities, there isn't much point in comparing them to Canada (3.8 million square miles) or Australia, the latter which is a continent.
Cherry-picking, I guess.
This is a great point.
We can quibble about my experiences, if you wish. No doubt geography is not my strong suit. I explicitly said I could care less about it. The utilitarian benefits to taking the fruits of anothers labor is not worth it, in my opinion. The pyramids probably benefited the beneficiaries but that doesnt change the fact they were built with slave labor. Im more interested in the moral arguments, which seem to be lacking.
Cherries, apples, bananas the fruits are being stolen.
Corporations are centrally planned economies, internally. They fail miserably most of the time at distribution. But it can be done.
What are you meaning by capitalism though?
Your cherry-picking doesnt appear to indicate anything, other than that Switzerland is highest on the Human Freedom Index and Singapore and the Netherlands have good infrastructure.
But to your point: Funds had to be expropriated from one source or another.
Funds do not have to be expropriated from one source to another. They can also be exchanged voluntarily. As a self-described democratic socialist, which method would fund your projects?
IDK, I feel like getting assaulted or killed by a party of raiding tribesmen and being shot by some state security service is an equally bad outcome, equally limiting one's freedom. However, with modern states, your risk of dying from homicide is orders of magnitude lower. Existent hunter gatherers have a greater share of their people dying in conflict than Europe did from 1914-1945. This is not even the most violent period in Europe's civilized history either. The Thirty Years War killed about 2 1/2 times more of the German population than both World Wars combined. The Huguenot War in France killed 14 times the share of the population that the First World War did. The bloodiest day in British military history is probably the start of the Somme, but it might be surpassed by the Battle of Townton. But even if we go with the revised lower figures for Townton, the British population at that point was a tiny fraction of the size and it had no large empire to draw on for manpower. In that one day, about 1-2% of the male population hacked and slashed each other to death.
Nor was treatment of prisoners better when states were less developed. At least today, nations make pains to hide their atrocities. Even the Nazis made such efforts. But in antiquity public torture was a norm, and in early antiquity, "because we want your stuff and to take slaves," was considered a legitimate declared casus belli.
Many European states have a homicide rate around 1-2 per 100,000. Now, you aren't free to do what you want if someone kills you. If you're 1-2,000 times more likely to be killed, that seems like a constriction on freedom. Nor are you free to read all the great works of world literature and philosophy unless there is a library, an internet connection, or you are very, very rich (and thus likely taking other's freedom). That sort of positive freedom sure seems important.
Some have suggested going more or less in the opposite direction than what you suggest.
That's assuming you suggest no state, government, taxes, all that, which I might have misunderstood.
For example, in order to deal with climate change, pollution, environmental concerns, etc, worldwide cooperation (or policing) of some sort might be needed.
Then again, I'm not quite sure what your idea is (apart from some things you seemingly detest).
By the way, individuals may live, say, 100 years (optimistically); outside of that, it's not really meaningful to speak of them (me) reaping the fruit of their (my) labor, or ownership of anything.
Subsequent generations may however "reap the fruit" of climate change, pollution, etc.
Would such concerns be irrelevant in the name of radical individualism (anarchy of sorts)?
Sometimes people are asked for contributions. Public Radio stations ask for donations about 3 times a year. They'll take any donation, but they generally suggest amounts. The Girl Scouts sell cookies. You get a box of cookies and part of the price goes to the organization. Capitalism in general works that way: you buy stuff and some of the money goes to the organization (like the stockholders).
For the expensive heavy lifting activities that a society needs--bridges, sewers, hospitals, schools, social services--we share resources through taxation. It's sharing, not expropriation. The pharaohs expropriated some grain from the peasants to pay for pyramids that did absolutely nothing for the peasants. Sharing through taxation maintains the quality of the society so that everyone can live a reasonably fulfilling life.
The better the quality of life a society desires, the more sharing of resources that is required. More is required because a very good quality of life for everyone is expensive. It's much cheaper to operate a shit hole society. Where do you want to live? Venezuela or Sweden?
Sharing might do well to describe the distribution, but stealing, plundering, or pilfering describes the acquisition. Sharing is good and all but if youre distributing stolen goods Im not sure its any less evil for the simple reason it is not theirs to share.
There are two means by which a man can acquire the resources to sustain himself: through work or robbery. He can apply his own effort towards nature and maybe do so in voluntary effort with others, or he can sit back and take from those who do. One is just, the other is unjust. One is moral the other is immoral. One is social, the other is anti-social. If we are to have a society it needs to be premised on the first rather than the latter.
Ah, great description of anti-social capitalism!
Hey, NOS4A2, we're not in the same city, let alone the same ball park. We're not going to agree.
Graft and corruption (of the sort that characterized the Chicago political machine for many years, is parasitical. But honest government is lean, efficient, and effective. Government does work that either does not (or should not) make money. Take the disease surveillance activities of public health departments. Controlling transmissible disease requires an agency to actively scan the community for disease -- syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, West Nile fever, cryptosporidium, and so on. It's not a money maker. Someone needs to measure school performance -- else billions go to waste. Education supervision like public health is not a money maker.
Mining? Agriculture? Transportation? Manufacturing? Warehousing? Retail? Capitalism does these (and others activities) because these are the money makers. In Democratic Socialism, the state DOES NOT take the place of business. If it does, then you end up with state capitalism, which is what the USSR was. Not that great. What happens in Democratic Socialism is that business and workers pay higher taxes (than in the US) to maintain a healthy, productive society. Democratic Socialism is not communism at all, and it's not classic socialism, either, because profit making corporations are a key part of the system -- just not quite as much profit making.
Thats the problem. Capitalism is present in all systems, and any system without it is inconceivable. The only difference between the present system and any so-called socialist one is that socialists would transfer the ownership and management of capital from private hands to the hands of some coterie of beneficent managers, usually a state. But that system is as purely capitalist as the next, and always will be.
This is apparent in your own system. You need to take other peoples money to invest in what you deem best for society, a task which I fear no one has quite yet figured out. Sure, they arent money-making ventures, but thats because you dont need to make money when youre taking other peoples money.
Quoting BC
So is the idea basically that Democratic Socialism proffers a welfare state with higher taxes, along with a non-profit government?
I am trying to understand the foil to Democratic Socialism. I think everyone agrees that the government should be non-profit, so it probably isn't that. Presumably the foil is a laissez-faire scheme with limited government, low taxes, and no welfare benefits coming from the state?
The other thing I often do not understand with respect to socialism or Democratic Socialism is how the change is supposed to be effected. For example, what is the motivation by which a capitalist society would transform itself into a Democratic Socialist society?
In Catholic social thought the closest thing to socialism is an emphasis on the common good,* but this emphasis would be understood to be homogenous throughout the society, affecting both the governmental and non-governmental spheres. The odd thing about Democratic Socialism, prima facie, is that it is some sort of hybrid. It requires a business sector that is strongly for-profit, a government that is strongly non-profit, and a tax scheme that provides a sort of distributive equality. I suppose I am not convinced that the tensions of a hybrid model are ultimately sustainable.
* And a preferential option for the poor, but let's leave that aside for now because it is more explicitly religious.
Perhaps purity of thought :roll: , or the attraction of living on the dole. :smile:
More or less.
[quote="Leontiskos;831953]I am trying to understand the foil to Democratic Socialism. I think everyone agrees that the government should be non-profit, so it probably isn't that. Presumably the foil is a laissez-faire scheme with limited government, low taxes, and no welfare benefits coming from the state?[/quote]
That describes neoliberalism -- weak state, strong corporations, minimal regulation, few benefits, everybody is on their own.
[quote="Leontiskos;831953]The other thing I often do not understand with respect to socialism or Democratic Socialism is how the change is supposed to be effected. For example, what is the motivation by which a capitalist society would transform itself into a Democratic Socialist society?[/quote]
European countries have had democratic socialism certainly since WWII but before as well.
Why would capitalism convert to any form of democratic socialism? Survival and crudely obvious necessity.
The American economy in the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th was "the gilded age" a period of extremely disproportion concentrations of wealth. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Progressives (like Theadore Roosevelt) began reforms which would eventually reduce the disparity of wealth. The New Deal and WWII was financed largely through extremely high taxes on wealth. Between 1929 and 1945 the amount of concentrated wealth was roughly sliced in half -- fewer millionaires by half.
After WWII, there was a consensus formed among government, labor, and the corporations (and their stockholders) to NOT return to conditions of the gilded age. During the years between 1945 and 1974 the US was roughly democratic socialist -- high taxes, very generous benefits, good wages and cooperative labor agreements, and so on. During this time, business, labor, and government all did well. The WWII debt was paid off; FHA, VA, NDEA, and other benefit programs helped working class people achieve greater education, better employment, and better housing. "The common good" won out,
After 1975, there was a reaction during which aspirants for greater private wealth and power effected lower tax rates, reduced benefits, union busting, and lower wages. They had had enough of that "common good" crap. Between 1975 and 2023 there was another extraordinary accumulation of wealth in a relatively small number of hands.
The public which had previously supported and benefitted from a democratic socialist period no longer held together, and they lost out.
Quoting Leontiskos
The American ruling class also has a preferential option for the poor, namely, "fuck 'em".
Quoting Leontiskos
It has not been sustainable in the USA -- perhaps the least fertile soil for socialism of any kind. Europe has maintained its democratic socialist systems much better. Seems like part of Brexit was an effort to get out from under the democratic socialism of the EU.
Whether the EU can maintain its democratic socialist programs during the more turbulent times ahead--increased pressures from climate refugees, global heating problems at home, war next door, god knows what else, remains to be seen. I hope they can for their sake.
My general approach, coming from Christianity, is wary of utopianism and scapegoating. It seems to me that often when we encounter a problem we are liable to blame it on the nearest available thing to hand. Then we eliminate the obstacle or achieve the means that we believed would be sufficient to overcome the problem, and yet the problem persists. We inevitably find that the problem was not caused in the way we supposed, and that it is much more complex and intractable. In the end this mentality is a form of scapegoating for the sake of some ideal (utopia). I mostly theorize that communism and socialism have taken this approach and elevated it to a societal key.
For example, a socialist might look at wealth disparity or the exploitation of the poor and point to capitalism as the culprit. But is it really true that significant wealth disparity and exploitation or the poor was absent before the industrial age and the rise of capitalism? If we slay capitalism on the hill will these problems really disappear? I am doubtful.
But Democratic Socialism is interesting insofar as it is a hybrid. It seeks to wed capitalism to social justice, and is therefore not as prone to making of capitalism an easy scapegoat. But again, I wonder whether the poles of this hybrid are symbiotic or competitive. For example, if the socialist aims at an equal distribution of wealth, and capitalism produces a disparity of wealth, then it is not clear that socialism can leverage capitalism on that score. In general I think that neoliberalism and libertarianism are unworkable, but I am not yet convinced that socialistic approaches are the proper alternative.
...Anyway, I just wanted to place a few of my cards on the table.
Quoting BC
Alright, we are on the same page with this.
Quoting BC
Because if no change occurs then class warfare would lead to the demise of the capitalist system?
The meta-narrative here is surely Marxist, is it not? The orbit is around class warfare, economic factors, the means of production, etc.?
Quoting BC
Okay. :up:
What do you make of the alternative narrative which sees the United States as a country where competition drives industry and social welfare is achieved by private institutions, such as churches, communities, voluntary institutions, and colleges, rather than by government intervention? Do you see this as historically accurate? Is there a value in subsidiarity?
Quoting BC
From my limited knowledge, it would seem that Democratic Socialism requires something of an insular mentality, because its foundation is a robust collectivism. But then Democratic Socialism and anti-insular mentalities, such as the "open borders" movement, get lumped together under the 'progressive' banner, even though one is the death knell of the other. If this is right, then immigration is an intrinsic danger to collectivisms, and it is also perhaps the most serious internal danger to these arrangements in Europe, including the EU.