3 ms·

yeah, the wonderful effects of real-life socialism & communism. same experience here, luckily I am young enough to only see and hear about it, not experience it

yeah, the wonderful effects of real-life socialism & communism. same experience here, luckily I am young enough to only see and hear about it, not experience it (on) myself. luckily i moved away, since this mentality ain't gone completely yet. every time I hear people bching about capitalism and glorifying some nice-on-the-paper utopias, where all will be happy and working for greater good of mankind (ie not entirely but in same ballpark - basic income), I just recall good old memories of this. haven't yet heard a theory that is "this"-proof, but boy I sure would like to...

moonchrome 11y ago
Yep, I noticed it on this forum recently as well. People complain when profit incentives don't lead to value creation in some instance and see that as a basis to reject capitalism. They don't consider what happens when you replace profit with politics - incentives end up being perverse by default (as we are seeing more and more in the West with regulatory capture and government granted monopolies). I think basic income is the least disruptive of all as it keeps the incentives for industry there but still creates a floor for everyone. It would change availability of various services/disrupt pricing but I would prefer that to socialism any day.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rawTruthHurts 11y ago
Now add some books and some experience to what you heard and you'll be good to go.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  dude, I lived in that society, seen how my parents, both university educated were punished, because they didn't belong to communist party and high education was something undesirable (like in all similar oppressive regimes). my luck was I was young enough to see things as they were (lack of freedom of speech, movement and all else), but I wasn't grown up yet to be a cog in the wheel, with very strict boundaries of what is allowed and what not. now, what's your experience? (next time, read properly before you subtly attack, HN has higher standards than this)
  - rawTruthHurts 11y ago
    In a world where I find every time more difficult to pay for the medicines to combat the ailments that keep me from being useful to society, I happened to discover that socialist ideas do have a point here and there. I fail to see how my personal experience is of any relevance to the issue.
pliny 11y ago
What GP is talking about is a centrally planned economy, and what you are referring to (basic income) is wealth redistribution, these are basically orthogonal issues. You can have a centrally planned economy where people are only paid if they work, and their pay is proportional to the value they create (so no wealth redistribution occurs), and you can have an economy built entirely around unregulated enterprise where the government taxes income/consumption/use of common goods like land or oil etc. and pays everyone an equal share of the taxes collected.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  You can on paper have a centrally planned economy where people are paid according to the value they create, but not in practice. The trouble is that bureaucratic proxies are used to determine value, and people inevitably game those proxies.
  - JamesBarney 11y ago
    This is not just true of governments, but any large coordinated human activity like corporations. I would imagine that the majority of salaries in the U.S. get determined by bureaucratic proxies.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      There is some use of proxies (with the inevitable attendant gaming), but in profit oriented companies it remains largely at the discretion of the manager(s).
      - JamesBarney 11y ago
        Unless you are directly working for the owner of the company your manager is just a bureaucratic proxy for the Owner/CEO/Board/Shareholders. Managers also generally only have limited control over your salary. If your engineering manager thinks you as a developer contributed more than a VP because of your innovation he would not be able to write you a check for $200,000 as a bonus to reward you for your value creation.
pjc50 11y ago
I have a colleague from the "eastern bloc" with a similar set of stories: factories in which everyone had a side business with stolen material. But it really, really shouldn't be seen as a binary choice between unfettered winner-takes-all capitalism and full zero-freedom communism. There are lots of possibilities in the middle which should be selected on a pragmatic basis. After all, the point of the original article is that in capitalism people can also end up in unsatisfying useless makework positions. Most companies are centrally planned internally.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  I think that socialism and communism are too often equated. Why should a corporation not pay fair taxes, they benefit from the infrastructure, legal system, police not to mention an educated workforce. It's a spectrum, western Europe style socialism works and fairly well, I'd sooner live in France or Germany than the US frankly. Winner takes all means the losers get nothing.
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613961 and marked it off-topic. Generic ideological tangents nearly always are.

moonchrome 11y ago

Yep, I noticed it on this forum recently as well. People complain when profit incentives don't lead to value creation in some instance and see that as a basis to reject capitalism. They don't consider what happens when you replace profit with politics - incentives end up being perverse by default (as we are seeing more and more in the West with regulatory capture and government granted monopolies). I think basic income is the least disruptive of all as it keeps the incentives for industry there but still creates a floor for everyone. It would change availability of various services/disrupt pricing but I would prefer that to socialism any day.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rawTruthHurts 11y ago

Now add some books and some experience to what you heard and you'll be good to go.

saiya-jin 11y ago
dude, I lived in that society, seen how my parents, both university educated were punished, because they didn't belong to communist party and high education was something undesirable (like in all similar oppressive regimes). my luck was I was young enough to see things as they were (lack of freedom of speech, movement and all else), but I wasn't grown up yet to be a cog in the wheel, with very strict boundaries of what is allowed and what not. now, what's your experience? (next time, read properly before you subtly attack, HN has higher standards than this)
- rawTruthHurts 11y ago
  In a world where I find every time more difficult to pay for the medicines to combat the ailments that keep me from being useful to society, I happened to discover that socialist ideas do have a point here and there. I fail to see how my personal experience is of any relevance to the issue.

pliny 11y ago

What GP is talking about is a centrally planned economy, and what you are referring to (basic income) is wealth redistribution, these are basically orthogonal issues. You can have a centrally planned economy where people are only paid if they work, and their pay is proportional to the value they create (so no wealth redistribution occurs), and you can have an economy built entirely around unregulated enterprise where the government taxes income/consumption/use of common goods like land or oil etc. and pays everyone an equal share of the taxes collected.

WalterBright 11y ago
You can on paper have a centrally planned economy where people are paid according to the value they create, but not in practice. The trouble is that bureaucratic proxies are used to determine value, and people inevitably game those proxies.
- JamesBarney 11y ago
  This is not just true of governments, but any large coordinated human activity like corporations. I would imagine that the majority of salaries in the U.S. get determined by bureaucratic proxies.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    There is some use of proxies (with the inevitable attendant gaming), but in profit oriented companies it remains largely at the discretion of the manager(s).
    - JamesBarney 11y ago
      Unless you are directly working for the owner of the company your manager is just a bureaucratic proxy for the Owner/CEO/Board/Shareholders. Managers also generally only have limited control over your salary. If your engineering manager thinks you as a developer contributed more than a VP because of your innovation he would not be able to write you a check for $200,000 as a bonus to reward you for your value creation.

pjc50 11y ago

I have a colleague from the "eastern bloc" with a similar set of stories: factories in which everyone had a side business with stolen material. But it really, really shouldn't be seen as a binary choice between unfettered winner-takes-all capitalism and full zero-freedom communism. There are lots of possibilities in the middle which should be selected on a pragmatic basis. After all, the point of the original article is that in capitalism people can also end up in unsatisfying useless makework positions. Most companies are centrally planned internally.

noir_lord 11y ago
I think that socialism and communism are too often equated. Why should a corporation not pay fair taxes, they benefit from the infrastructure, legal system, police not to mention an educated workforce. It's a spectrum, western Europe style socialism works and fairly well, I'd sooner live in France or Germany than the US frankly. Winner takes all means the losers get nothing.

dang 11y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613961 and marked it off-topic. Generic ideological tangents nearly always are.