Socialism

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Those laws will be changed soon, "human nature" is nothing more then genetic programming, and we will wipe that s**t out that gives birth to such BS you see in the modern world.

There have been successful non-capitalist societies. Next there is no fine line between what is "capitalist", "market oriented" or "socailist"... these are just dumb labels non intellectuals use to justify their belief in one idealogy over another.

Next the "laws" of human nature are not immutable, if they were civilization would have never advanced. Next science describes regularities, if the laws of nature changed then science would have to change with it. You really need to brush up on the philosophy of science.

The orwellian one. I imagine that you did read it, I only bring that up because you have Jack Bauer across your wrongplanet.

You mean that wealth stems from clearly defined property rights, correct? As after all, I would argue that a significant amount of wealth can stem from human capital, which tends to have less legal problems, it is just more complex actions that lead to problems. Also, are you going for your PhD, or your PhD and JD? The reason I ask is that property rights extend into both and exposure to both give you stronger background to back up the law and economics movement.
The legal system does allow better use of property through defining how property rights and other institutes should work. The thought of legal structures always makes me think of Coase theorem because of the claim that well defined property structures can deal with externalities. Of course, how well that works depends on how you view transaction costs. I have not read that book though, I want to of course, I think I will try to read Law's Order by David Friedman first though because I know where to find it on the internet.

Well, I would counter by saying that the "BS" is due to the ignorance of natural law.

You will have to be clearer, because I have already dealt with advertisement and auto dealers. Are you trying to argue for protection of the human being from themselves? Are you arguing about crime?

The reduction of human beings to cogs in a machine cannot be obtained without destroying what people celebrate about being human. I don't think that much effort will go towards this reprogramming though, as you have to recognize that the technology is being developed by capitalist economies.
In modern times? As the center of this debate relies upon the acknowledgment of the complex modern system. As well, we can analyze capitalist, market oriented and socialist by their definitions. They are not dumb labels though, as even intellectuals have dealt with matters on these issues promoting one system over another.
The only thing is that the kind of change in order to create the society sought would end up having to be drastic, civilization arose because such a development was in line with the human race. A change required to make a human being so different as to fit into another system would be the removal of what we consider human. The only man I can see living in a completely planned economy would have more in common with an ant than a man, and I would imagine nobody wants that change.

Well, I think that wealth comes only AFTER property is protected. And what do you mean by "human capital?" I haven't decided yet, but I think I will go after the latter.



Well, to be honest, I haven't really studied the Coase theorem, but it is on my list of things to study in more detail. I know that it plays a huge role in institutional economics, but not such a big part in classical economic theory. Do you have a suggested reading on the Coase theorem?

Socialism (economically) is virtually anything between Communism and Economic Centrism. Some branches of socialism are VERY close to Communism (but still are not Communism), while others are closer to the center.

Libertarian Socialism specifically consists of very little government control, and individual communities having their own miniature Socialist society going (anarcho communism is the same thing, only with communism, and absolutely zero government control).

Democratic Socialism is Socialism that's achieved through the Democratic process (ex: Norway and Sweden), and it keeps the Democratic Government.
The reason a lot of Socialism has ended up with an authoritarian ruler is because it was achieved through a revolution.

I don't know about much of the other Socialisms that you've mentioned, but I'm assuming that the religious Socialisms and "Eco" Socialisms just have different Social aspects...like Eco Socialists most likely are out to protect the environment while....being Socialist I guess.

Hope this helps you!

Maybe instead of implying I am an idiot you could instead explain your reasoning because I am confused. "Immutable" means unchanging, static, permanent.

Well, I am stating that the most valuable resources are often times not buildings but rather the training/experience of the people that work in them. This belongs to people usually no matter what as one cannot separate this from them, unless we argue that we can effectively enslave them.


I didn't read about it formally, I just saw some economics majors(or masters?) arguing about it saying that instead of pigovian taxes, they supported Coase theorem.

The simplest way to get it is probably an explanation by David Friedman

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Coase_World.html

However, many other links are found at the wiki article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

I think he was trying to get at the heart of the matter by pointing out there are market systems and then there are non-market systems. I mean, by market is systems where there is competition and choices. I would argue that socialism is any system in which market drive is replaced by a government or community drive, either that or that socialism was simply a branch of any system where this occurs where the power is focused upon drives typically considered left wing. Norway and Sweden are not socialist but rather mixed economies as the market is what drives the major economic engines, they just have large, interventionist governments for better or worse.

Well, yeah. (Not the enslavement bit, of course.) I am not saying that a business that trains an employee now owns that employee. I am, however, saying that---well, you know what, I can't exactly explain what I am trying to say. I sometimes get so frustrated with myself since I have the hardest time remembering that no one can read my mind. I will get back to this tomorrow, I think, after I have slept on the question.



That wikipedia entry is really my only information on the Coase Theorem.

Ok, it is no big deal. However, it is true that the basic structures necessary for a larger economy do rely on property rights to a great extent in order to provide incentive.


Ok. Yeah, I don't have anything better than that and the links from it.

It's not about labels or systems... it's about rational distirbution of wealth so you don't have or at least minimize 1) wars 2) Revolutions. 3) Suffering and poverty.

Next no economy is pure capitalist (or any other label for that matter) because human beings will mess up any system if left unregulated. In a pure capitalist system there would be no laws, and no one to protect from conterfeiting and inflation... i.e. the so called "anarcho capitalists", next their would be no patent system, or copyright system... since free competition means no monopolies on ideas. Next their is human beings under capitalism having a huge tendency to design stuff that breaks and commit fraud, pirate and sell knock offs of originals in the name of easy money (perverse incentives). There are also so many products that waste enormous amounts of resources and energy to produce and ship some place, that will break very quickly, and were infact designed to. Also known as "defective by design". or "designed obsolescense", all sorts of products are designed like this just to boost next quarters profits while doing damage to the environment and wasting money and energy just so some company can have more money... then there is software like , i.e. kind of like Windows Vista (DRM).

Next there is no bloody reason why people have to live in poverty today in industrialized nations when the Walton's daughter can spend 68 f*****g million dollars on a god damn painting while some family is going starving, that is the evil of for-profit oriented market systems... because the only political power, and only freedom is economic power when you don't own any selfsustaining land (in terms of actual resources). If you don't have economic power you have no rights and no freedom, and those with more money have more rights and more freedom then those who have less. So it's always going to be a struggle until human beings evolve and transcend their irrationality andbiology through science and technology.

The problem is ultimately with the distributions of economic power. Since economic power means resource access. It's not private property vs public... it's in the flawed conceptualizations of property and rights to such claims currently in use against the rights of a landless (in terms of food, housing, energy) society of workers who don't own societies key assets (food industry, energy industry). The next advances will be in reconceptualizing idesa related to property and their rights, etc. As technology advances this allows for new economic models that will displace older ones.

Some kind of mixed economy with "socialism" aspects is inevitable because modern people do not own their own food or energy sources, so welfare and wealth redistribution is justified. Next is the automation of investment, computers do and hired managers do all the finance managing for the super rich that own over 50% of the earths resources. Such concentration of economic power is extremely dangerous.

If you didn't have welfare you'd constantly have the threat of revolution because most people no longer own self-sustaining (in terms of resources) productive land. They own tiny little lots and **must** sell their labour to survive. Most modern countries have universal health care, the US is looking like its finally getting on board.

Even for-profit market oriented systems have some really perverse problems if left unregulated and unchecked that would rip the system apart.

Some of the problems of market oriented systems:

a) Fraud incentive... or the Easy money incentive. (counterfeiting, theft, piracy, copyright infringement, espionage, etc)
b) Designing products that are Defective by design.
c) Wasted labour power due to unemployed being dependent on private owners for food, housing, energy.
d) Constant threat of revolution by underclasses, since their wages will always remaind stagnant as inflation rises.
e) Anything that isn't "profitable" is not allowed to take prominence in terms of the time a person has to live during their life, since people who aren't working for some profit making business are penalized economically by lack of sustaining wages when not working.
f) The illusion that "anyone can get rich" or that capitalism is a meritocracy, is only a half truth. The truth is there are only a limited number of seats and you don't want everyone becoming rich because not enough people would be maintaining society if they ever did get enough money to not have to work anymore.
g) That the government and militaries work with the corporations of the world set prices/taxes strategically of certain things to keep people working and maintaing society, and planning attacks on other countries politics, governments and markets to benefit their own agendas in the name of profit. (not that this is exclusively capitalist mind you).
h) Social decay. In people not having enough time for themselves, living as a wage slave at work most of their lives... becoming depressed, suicidal, families breakdown, get divorced, etc... since no one has time for human relationships with all manner of distractons of modern society.

I think we can all just agree than capitalism and socialism suck in their pure form.

It is about systems, it is about systems we can put in place for the creation of wealth. Wars today exist because of standing conflicts and corrupt political and economic structures that usually exist outside of the capitalist system. If we look at Africa, we can note that the area is torn up by war but lacking in the economic structures capitalism requires, and in fact, the attempts by African leaders to form socialist states has put them backwards. Revolutions are less common in the capitalistic parts of the world, the major revolutions occurred within nations where the systems were not in place. Finally, suffering and poverty are being reduced by capitalism as we speak, unless you doubt the massive increases in wealth that are currently occurring in the nations that have started reform to the capitalist economic system. The major problem that occurs here is that you only see a pie, I see a factory that produces pies, for you it is all about distribution, for me the major problem ends up being how to get this factory to create more and more pie. In my way of thinking, by spreading our factory system, pie will be created on a greater and greater scale and will feed more and more people, and that idea seems to be what is currently happening in the developing world.
Nobody is arguing for pure capitalism, the argument here is for more capitalism over more socialism. We have already assumed that a government will exist. As well, we have already talked about some issues of regulation and asymmetrical information.
Yeah, there is, the reason being that individuals are not calling out for that, and to do so over their wills and heads would require an abuse of power that would be a threat to the welfare of everyone, as governmental power as shown itself to be a danger to the welfare of individuals. The fact that Walton's daughter wastes money is no skin off of my nose. The only thing is that to force others to use the fruits of their labor on you would be a violation of their rights so the claim of redistribution defies the original concept of natural rights to some extent. Not only that but those with more money are supposed to have greater liberties, as there has to be a reason why individuals will sacrifice for more money. The only thing is that efforts are made to give the poor better means of improving their lot, this will help them by improving social mobility and issues of that nature, and the poor in the richest nations of the world are rich compared to their ancestors. The claim of changing our biology will destroy everything that ever made us human though, capitalism is a reflection of the ideas of individual freedom and trade offs and things of that nature and as dexkaden said, is based upon natural rights. To create a humanity that will be able to deal with economic issues without capitalism will require creating a humanity comprised of individuality-less ants, and few people want that, that is a large evil compared to the small evils(and diminishing ones at that) that currently exist.
The problem is that growth and measures such as that are not instantaneous. It is private property vs public, there is no third way between that, either it is owned by a private organization or it is owned by everyone. The issues you mentioned already got to the struggle between private and public property. The rights of the landless are not being violated, as has been mentioned earlier capitalism is consistent with natural rights. The advances in property are going to be perhaps to improve transactions, but not to deal with rights in the measures that you imagine. New economic models will not remove capitalism though in the near future at all and I doubt the distant future either because they cannot deal with the issues of economic calculation.
So, you technically are not arguing for socialism. You are arguing for capitalism in the extent found in a mixed economy. Modern people don't have to own their food or energy resources, they have not done so for years and to claim they must now is just a blind assertion. I don't think that computers and hired managers do all of the investing for the super-rich either, as many of the richest people ARE investors. Most notably there is super-rich man Warren Buffett, who got rich as an investors. Not only that but non rich investors occur as well, the real issue ends up being one of individual choices between saving and spending. Prove the danger. To me that seems like an assertion more than anything else, the concentration of that economic power is still among a large group of people, many of whom have now taken to philanthropy, such as Gates and Buffett.
Uhmm.... not likely no. Like I mentioned earlier the poor in the richest nations are better off than their ancestors. There were greater amounts of poverty in past societies without the welfare systems put in place today. Once again you put forth an assertion that is not really backed by the evidence. Of course they MUST sell their labor to service, how the f**k do you think resources will be put in place anyway? Obviously people must work to create wealth and better things, even one of the previous socialist posters argued that work is required for an economic system. The reason that the US is going for governmental intervention in healthcare though, is not because of the workers but rather because of asymmetrical information problems in medical care causing higher costs.
Nobody here I have seen is an anarcho-capitalist. Not only that but even then I don't think that it would rip itself apart as there are too many people who have enough interest to keep it from doing so. You also have to recognize that governmental programs and interventions can and do set up perverse incentive systems as well.

Fraud will exist whenever crime exists and crime will always exist due to human nature.

Defective products by design tend to be pushed out of the market, those who create s**t will end up in the shitter, while those who create quality will be bought and admired. Why do you think American auto suffers while Toyota wins? Toyota innovated a system of production to reduce the amount of flaws in automobiles and is receiving some of the highest growth levels for that. Now it can be argued that asymmetrical information will make it so that regulation might be desirable to some extent, however, defective products in capitalism have no comparison to the defective products manufactured under the soviet system, given that a major cause of death was fires due to televisions blowing up.

Labor unemployed is not so much wasted as it is out of its ideal place, you have to recognize that most unemployment is frictional unemployment spent looking for the best available job, that 5% is not always the same 5% and the time spent unemployed is actually a time where the individual tries to find a new place within the capitalist system, any system will have to have some method of placing labor into another place and frictional unemployment is how it is done in capitalism to some extent.

I have never even heard of a threat of revolution from the underclasses, are you sure you are looking at facts and not just literature? The underclass, as you say, has never lived in a better time in history if you consider the war torn nations of the past, the slaves, and other groups in the past that could not have our glittering gold of salt which we now consider cheap as dirt.

Yeah, the profitability thing relates back to profits guiding the economy to some extent, if consumers don't like a product then they don't buy it, if there are not sales then the company has to recognize that it is not appeasing its consumers. Without a profit system we cannot determine which ideas are getting the most support from the populace that desires such things.

Limited number of seats? The number of rich is increasing. Not only that but this also relates back to how expectations change with time and other things. I would argue that the middle class are rich by the standards of previous men and societies, they have relatively excellent food sprinkled with spices, air-conditioning, literature and literacy, and easily available forms of entertainment.

If the government is as corrupt as you claim it is now, why not under any other society. The fact that government and only government has true coercive power, given that corporations are not homogeneous, seems to indicate that by expanding that power you would in effect be creating a greater danger.

Social decay??? For god's sake, the capitalist society has allowed the greatest level of freedom to ever occur. Where are women no longer the property of men? Capitalist society. What societies have allowed for the greatest levels of literacy to occur? Capitalist societies. Depression has existed before capitalism, the Amish have it as well and even track some of the heritable aspects noting the family line relationship. The fact that there are families to be broken down is a sign of capitalist success, the past society was full of mothers having 20 children and where death was commonplace, growth and progress has allowed for the small family to arise where parents actually name their kids at birth rather than waiting a few months. People also have more communicative ability than ever before given the rise of mass communication. I mean, really, the social problems that seem to arise now seem to be more because people are free enough to do what they think rather than be told and because material circumstances reduce the necessity of women to stay in unhealthy relationships and things like that. The wage slave argument though is also sort of BS, by that argument all men have always been slaves but if I am ever a slave at least let me be one in a modern capitalist society.

Even if we accept that capitalism has not worked wonderfully, the monument to socialism ends up being the millions of corpses arising from ill-fated attempts to create it, and the societies whose growth it pushed back and still does so to. Capitalism at the very least has had a decent standard of living for the largest amount of the people living under it. Your criticism on welfare ultimately is not one so much on capitalism as it is one that we don't give wealth away to those whose responsibility we never accepted responsibility for, and that people living in non-capitalist systems tend to not be rich across the world. Even this is being tackled though through economists who are implementing capitalism in order to promote welfare. Most notably, economist Jeffrey Sachs is doing a lot to address third world poverty and he also is an individual who is working to create effective capitalist systems in these nations.

http://www.ideachannel.tv/

FREE streaming video of "Free to Choose" in honor of Milton Friedman. The irony of the first segment is the Govenor of California who is now trying to implement state paid health care.