Dictators and war are not unique to capitalism, they are just more profitable under it.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Yeah all these things existed long before capitalism
They precede Capitalism, sure, but in our modern world it's easy to draw the line between those and Capitalism. Capitalism is very effective at incentivizing these.
Either way, lets eat the rich
I'm not pro-capitalism but I'm curious what flavor of replacement you would choose.
Socialism. When properly implemented, it has a fair amount in common with capitalism but you keep what you earn, the disabled aren't left to die, and billionaires aren't an option.
The only one of these I can see socialism eliminating is unemployment. You can easily have dictators and wars with socialism.
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Super capitalism. It's like capitalism, but superer.
Let's try Universal Basic Income with proportional representation and lobbying made illegal.
I prefer Georgist economic democracy.
- All firms are structured as worker coops
- Land and natural resources are collectively owned with revenue derive from common ownership going out as a UBI
- Common pools of capital collectivized across multiple worker coops through a system of venture communes.
- Public goods and mutual aid institutions funded through some variant of quadratic funding
How are dynamics of violence and power handled? Within such systems I'm always worried about elites, coercion, consolidation. How are binding decisions made, and how do we prevent those powers from bringing about the things mentioned previously?
Worker coops are firms that are democratically worker-controlled. Communes are democratic also.
Unemployment would be less worrying due to the UBI. Worker coops are committed to their workers so have incentives to train them. Also, worker coops prefer to reduce pay during downturns rather than employment.
Trade policy between communes would be set by free agreement. Quadratic funding helps resolve collective action problems such as for defense. Power concentration is severely limited @memes
Hmmm, I see. I guess I'm asking about the nonlegal basis of law, or the non-normative basis of norms. Is there good contemporary research about the social dynamics of this at scale? I remember Lenin writing about commune clusters, and there's mention of scaling in Das Kapital volume one.
It was a good question. I am limited in response length because I am on Mastodon.
In terms of social dynamics of a stateless society, The Possibility of Cooperation by the game theorist Michael Taylor uses game theory to argue against the Hobbesian case for the state. Radical Markets by E. Glen Weyl covers how to do common ownership with minimal administration @memes
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@jlou
A different thread: why only worker co-ops, and not also other sorts of co-ops?
I do wonder if, in order to encourage innovation, it's a good idea to allow non-coops in limited forms.
For example (and feel free to adjust these numbers), you can start a business and employ people but as soon as you pass €1 million revenue or 5 employees (whichever is first) then it has to become a co-op.
The existence of UBI, UBS and an economy that's majority co-ops should limit exploitation.
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How about capitalism with the appropriate government controls? Break up monopolies and all anti-competitive practices. Use regulations to actually punish violators (and not with some small fraction of profits gained from that violation). Increasing tax rates for the super wealthy with the right tax shelter penetrating laws.
Sprinkle in some appropriate social policies and safety nets.
Capitalism inherently violates a basic tenet of justice. For example, consider a bus vehicle company, the employer owns 100% of the produced buses and owes 100% of liabilities for used-up inputs. The employer is solely legally responsible for the whole result of production. Workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce buses. The basic tenet of justice is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. There is clearly a mismatch here in capitalism @memes
Wait, so you're saying the bus drivers should be responsible for maintenance of the bus they drive, and own it, and the company should just take a cut? So, uber but for busses?
I was describing a company to produce buses i.e. the actual vehicle. Not for driving buses. The alternative to what I describe as the problem with capitalism is to structure all firms as worker cooperatives. In a worker cooperative, the basic tenet of justice is satisfied i.e. legal and de facto responsibility match @memes
Like southwest airlines?
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Socialism. Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. Society run and owned by the Proletariat, for the good of the people, not profits for megacorps and large Capitalists.
The fact that this is downvoted tells me that American propaganda is still going strong.
I think it's also a symptom of Solarpunk not being explicitly anticapitalist, it's an aesthetic and a goal that liberals can appreciate as they see climate change accelerating, but haven't done the analysis necessary to agree that Capitalism is one of the largest underlying causes of climate change.
Anti-capitalism ≠ socialism @memes
We've had this discussion before. While technically correct, what you describe as what you want would best be described as Market Socialism, you just prefer to take on the mantle of Liberal for what I perceive as optic reasons.
The majority of anticapitalism is Socialist in nature, though you'll probably still find mercantilists or monarchists somewhere.
When people think of socialism they think of central planning in an authoritarian government, this has nothing to do with economic democracy and is its opposite.
I prefer the term economic democracy for the system I advocate.
It's not just optics. The arguments for economic democracy are based on the liberal theory of inalienable rights. These arguments demonstrate that capitalism is illiberal and violates liberal principles @memes
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Socialism only means Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. This does not necessarily entail Authoritarianism or central planning, and central planning itself doesn't even entail Authoritarianism by necessity.
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An economy can be democratically run via worker councils, which would constitute both central planning and economic democracy.
Essentially, you're just arguing off of vibes. You even said it yourself, "when people think," implying optic reasoning.
As for the mantle of liberal, you're using it to refer to philosophy, rather than its far more common usage as ideology. Using your own methods against your claim, when people think of liberalism, they know and understand liberalism the socioeconomic ideology surrounding Capitalism and individualism!
That's why I perceive your verbiage as optics, rather than anything of substance. In my view, you're a Socialist that rejects the term but accepts the model.
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Yeah, we probably should have been working on that 50 years ago. Oh well
Dictators, unemployment, and war are not because of capitalism. Do yall think the worlds problems started with the 16th century?
Not like it started with capitalism, these 3 have drastically changed under capitalism. Our only hope is that they will change further under techno-feudalism into something less devastating
JFC people this meme hits almost all the antisemitic tropes. All it needs are the wings rubbing together.
That's not funny, it's just propaganda
Centralization not capitalism is the root cause of many issue and the more we blame capitalism the further we are away from reality.
Capitalism fundamentally has issues with it that cannot be solved via regulation. There is absolutely no reason why it's necessary that there be petite dictators in charge of Production, rather than democratic control.
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