this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Is a planned economy an inherent part of socialism? That seems like the biggest red flag (lol) in this comic. All sorts of incentive mismatches there.
"Democracy at work, too" is like the biggest pitch for socialism, "government deciding what businesses can exist" is the biggest pitch against. A tightrope to walk, for sure.
Why would a democratically planned economy be a bad thing? How is it more democratic that capitalist owners decide which businesses can exist, rather than the people collectively decide so?
My concern is that I cannot see a democratically planned economy implemented in a way which doesn't sacrifice individualism of people .
Democracy isn't strictly "freedom" on its own, but it is a powerful tool to protect our "individual freedoms" by ensuring our leaders act in our best interests.
But unless everyone has the exact same mind set that means that the majority will always drown out the minority and so the minority voices will be forced to conform to what the majority want.
We are mostly like-minded in things like what should be crimes/punishment/rights/etc(but note this wasn't always the case): but everyone has individual preferences, like colour of shirt, a specific brand of food, video games, etc which means they need an economy where products can be created by individuals rather than decided by the majority.
If 51% of people think wearing a t-shirt with a cute dog on it is a stupid waste of time then that t-shirt doesn't get made, and so the 49% people that did like the shirt lose out.
Also if 99% of people wanted the garbage collected, but no one wanted to work there, what happens then? Is someone forced to work there? That would be extreme, instead maybe there is more incentive to work there with more pay, but then what if lots of people wanted to work there due to this incentive who would decide who works there and therefore who owns the company?
Hyperbolic examples I know but i hope you see the point I'm trying to make.
Capitalism despite all it's flaws can allow a single person the chance seek funding to provide a good or service and if deemed profitable (either through high demand or cheap production) then the product gets made. People can also seek the obscure products they want rather than what's popular.
Your comment comes from a very flawed and limited understanding of what democratic planning of the economy could be. "51% of the population decided to wear a blue shirt so only blue shirts are made" isn't at all a good representation of the possibilities of democratic planning of the economy.
Look at Amazon. Amazon is already an insanely big centrally planned economy. They have at their disposal the best engineers and computer scientists that enable such central planning that makes them an indestructible behemoth of efficiency. As soon as one client so much as clicks on a product, computer algorithms calculate the likelihood of them buying the product, and send signals to their warehouses to prepare their products for delivery, and in turn they send signals to their distributor or the manufacturer to supply or produce some more, all in the blink of an eye. The power that we, as workers, could harness if we made that ours, is unimaginably strong. Imagine a planned economy where direct input from consumers modifies the manufacturing quantities of the goods produced, without Amazon selling your data and appropriating all the surplus value of all workers in the process.
Imagine wanting to open a small business, and instead of having to be rich from the start, going to the local council to see if the community is interested in having such a business, let's say a cafe. You make a pitch, they like they idea, and they fund your project because, after all, it will be good for the neighborhood, with a part of the money they're allocated by the state for such purposes. You run your business in a risk-free fashion, since the community is already interested and has funded the project, and the better it works, the more money you can earn since you have productivity bonuses.
Imagine facing climate change, and making collectively as a society a 20-year plan subdivided in 5-year intervals to decarbonise the main sectors of the economy responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, all with the collaboration of experts in the science of climate change, experts in said sectors working not to maximise the profit of shareholders but for the betterment of humanity, and computer programmers managing absurd amounts of data that allow for very precise estimations of the state of the economy in 5 years time.
That's the future I want, and it's doable. We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have the people. The only thing left is to eliminate the cancerous property structures of productive property.
I understand it doesn't highlight the benefits like better working conditions but I feel that it illustrates my point well in that individualism is affected negatively in a democratic planned economy and forced to conform to the majority.
While it would be nice for individuals to get funding for whatever businesses ideas they think are profitable, in reality it comes down to trying to sell a product you haven't produced yet.
Going by your cafe example, what if there was a Diner nearby that sold some coffee/tea on its menu. You have to convince the majority that your shop is a worthwhile investment with them never even tasting the product, and even if it is low cost enough that you would still make profit.
What if there was a sub-par cafe with lazy employees already in town and you want to make a cafe that takes pride in its work. Would people want two cafes in the same town? If not then you are competing with a store without even able to sell a product of your own.
It's ultimately the taxpayers that are taking the risk on your product instead of the individual so they won't want to pay for a service they won't use or care for. Even if the minority of people can make it profitable.
Maybe a hybrid system where company can be owned by both private and public funding, but the private would win as they exploit their workers to cut down costs.
Ultimately I believe people should be able to start a private business on a product they believe in, as there is more diversity in products and more freedom for creativity that way. While at the same time believe that employees should have a voice that can disrupt profitability if they are mistreated. Either via Union or otherwise.
That problem still takes place in capitalism. It's just that, instead of having to convince people for funding, you risk going into bankruptcy when you try your business idea.
Great, so you run you business in capitalism, and run the other cafe into bankruptcy because that's wonderful for everyone, very efficient and humane. How about the local council decides that the other cafe is shit, and they give a warning to the place that they need to improve the quality of their work?
This can very easily be compensated by bigger, not so local, councils. Maybe specialized in more weird and experimental business ideas. Located in densely-populated ideas so that one of these weirder businesses can give cover to a high amount of population.
Really, you seem to be coming up with increasingly-complicated problems on the implementation on the spot. My point is that all of these problems can be outsourced to direct democracy instead of "consumer democracy", in a more efficient, fair, and risk-free way for everyone.
Capitalism is still seeking funding, but there is more freedom in how to get it. You can self-fund or seek investors and the option to fund publicly via crowdsourcing. Funds that are invested in a company is the only cost that you are liable for. E.g. If you invest £1000 the maximum you could lose is that £1000. (unless it is an LLP I think).
Bankruptcy is a protection of capitalism in that the owner cannot be liable for the debts of the company. Yes, there are scummy abusers of this protection, but it is a protection no the less
Lets assume that the council actually gives a crap on the quality actually issues this warning? This implies the council has the final say on how a business should be run, further proving that individualism is restricted.
What if it still doesn't improve? I'm assuming they'd shut down the business for ignoring the warning? So in this hypothetical there is no cafe and no jobs. When in capitalism there is at least a competing better store left over with presumably the same number of jobs.
Do they fire the manager and the staff and replace them? I suppose this is job neutral still and probably the quality improves, but ignoring the difficulties finding a replacement then it will be the same store and same equipment used. There is no development or improvement or creativity because there isn't any incentive or "freedom" to do so because the council has the final say on how your store is run.
I'd consider this worse as it widens the divide of urban and rural areas.
Again it is still the taxpayer that is taking this risk, and not the individual, so there is no reason why a council would bother with anything that isn't an easy win for the public approval (or a selfish grift done under the table).
For example: A council member that a approves a sex shop could easily be labelled a pervert by his opponent in the next election so why would he take the risk on it?
I'm sure there are other businesses too that are punished in this system as the need to go through government means it needs easily positive public approval before it is considered, and there is no option to do it on your own as private owned businesses aren't allowed.
Have you considered that its maybe because it is an increasingly-complicated issue?
I could accuse you of giving increasingly-easy answers too. Though to be honest I don't think that. I think you have thought through the benefits in great detail but not reflecting on the negatives and who could get hurt.
I don't think it is that simple. As I said before democracy is the will of the majority and thus only majority-approved cases are considered leaving little room for freedom of expression (or at least in terms creating a business and diversity of products)
Democracy is NOT "efficient", but it is "effective". It is a slow tedious process with 9001 rules, with the goal that the end of it, the only possible candidates are people that serve the majority's best interest. It works well for governments (well...for the most governments) but it results in an economy only serving majority interests. Capitalism with all it's flaw still provides products to the minority as long as demand outweighs production. It is a fair, and risk-free way for the majority, not everyone
Saying that I don't think the current state of capitalism is acceptable in anyway. It has turned into large companies bullying smaller ones via mass produced goods/ large user bases/brand recognition/etc, and thus accumulating power and wealth in which no human should have.
Capitalism thrives with competition, as new ideas and higher quality products are a survival pressure for the businesses to thrive. However there is little/no survival pressure to treat employees well (aside from rare/ high skill jobs) and also large companies do not have any significant competition meaning they have no need to incentivise better consumer experiences. In fact it turns to the opposite where they try to squeeze value from customers instead. This is made worse with how public trading incentivises investing in a small company then demanding unsustainable growth until it is sold at the peak market price and left to rot.
"Pure" capitalism left us with this mess. But I think proper regulation to tweak these survival pressures are key to turning things around.
All employees should have the right to affect the profitability of a company, either through unions or otherwise. This incentivises a company to treat the employees well.
Investers in the stock market should be liable for selling "at risk" stock for up to 3 months since the transaction date and the buyer of this stock can then sue for any damages from the base price. This incentivises investors to invest in stable long-term businesses rather than "pump and dump" a new fad.
The potential for regulatory capture and corruption, as well as the inherent inefficiency of having a limited number of decision makers. I wouldn't trust the 2028 Trump Administration to thoughtfully determine which businesses are allowed to exist for 4 years.
It's more democratic to let anyone start a business, rather than having a gatekeeper. But more importantly I think it makes more sense to let the capitalists take the losses if their business idea sucks, and then socializing the gains once we know it works.
I'm sad that when you use the word "democracy", the best future people can imagine is the modern American system of "democracy"...
It's not, just read about Anarcho-Syndycalists, or Anarcho-Communists, to get different perspectives.
This is post is about ML specifically, only really the first and last panels are about socialism in general.
I'd argue that yes, it is, because markets entail private ownership, which goes against the basic notion of socialism
The closest you can get to socialism with the market system is worker's cooperative - but market forces do not stop accumulation of power in the form of land and capital, as well as mergers and acquisitions. At the end of the day, you just reset capitalism for a while if you give businesses a free reign.
If you want to maintain a market system under socialism you need to separate it from public production. We would need to democratically decide what is a public good (e.g. housing, food, medicine, etc.) and what is a market good (essentially luxury goods). The private market would also have to be heavily regulated to prevent capital accumulation and associated power concentration. It's a really difficult problem.
One of the reasons the Soviet economy failed is because computers were not advanced enough in the 1950s-80s to automate the kind of consumer goods production that a command economy would require to be able to compete with a market system. I think if we tried this again today we would have an easier time of it, and if you look at a large vertically integrated corporation like Walmart, they've more or less figured it out already.
I agree that automatization would greatly help.planned economies and that was one of the issues with Soviet economy in particular. Just too many variables to control manually. Nowadays, corporations do exactly that.
I wonder how can market be regulated in a way that doesn't create capital accumulation. Isn't that the very point of starting an enterprise?
For Marxists, absolutely. Marx heavily critiqued the profit motive and the dangers of producing to fulfil greed instead of need. For Syndicalists, Market Socialists, etc? Perhaps not.
Workplace democracy is an improvement, but Marxists will argue insufficient alone in combatting class society.
What's your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?
billions dead of starvation every time its been attempted
Amazing.
You do know starvation rates lowered over time every time central planning has been put in place, right? You do know Capitalist countries also plan, correct?
I'm not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it's inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can't possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn't trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.
I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I'd think if we're theorizing, there's a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there's a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.
Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.
Advocates of Central Planning advocate for rungs, not just 5 dudes and some excel spreadsheets. There would be factory level planners, local planners, regional planners, state planners, country planners, and international planners. Nobody will know everything, but they will know their own areas inputs and outputs.
Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine? Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths, it's better to have a cohesive whole that is thoroughly regulated and democratically controlled.
I recommend reading Wage Labor and Capital for more information on why the Profit Motive and Capitalist Production itself to be bad.
It's more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.
I don't necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they're small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I'm not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.
I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.
Why does that mean it cannot be accounted for democratically?
Nothing is static, they will eventually grow into monopoly and corruption.
The correct path is to avoid the problem entirely via Socialism.
That sounds like Market Socialism by another name.
Market Socialism has competing cooperatives, not central planning.