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You and GP are romanticising socialism. Japanese people are, for example, very conscientious on average. I recall images of them cleaning up after themselves at

by nnfy 9y ago

You and GP are romanticising socialism. Japanese people are, for example, very conscientious on average. I recall images of them cleaning up after themselves at world cup events. This has nothing to do with capatilism. And capatilism is not necessarily evil any more than socialism is.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago
My claim was that people who live in a sharing-based society would in general be more respectful of community property than those who live in a capitalist individualist society. I was not talking about all capitalist societies, just an individualist one. That some capitalist societies are more conscientious than others only lends credibility to my claims. You could have a sharing-based capitalist society, for example. And I agree with the other poster - USSR was not even remotely socialist, it was a state capitalist society. The state owned the means of production. I am more interested in societies where the workers own the means of production - so some kind of Marxism. However my original comment could be satisfied by a capitalist society that chose voluntarily to fund open source robots that provide for human survival - no Marxism required. In a way though, open source is similar to everyone "owning" the information, so in that way open source resembles communist ownership of information.
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  You are aware that "the state" isn't a thing, right? "The State" is merely what we call what you're referring to as the workers if it doesn't do what we want it to. The State is just a group of people. This type of revisionist romanticism towards the USSR is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. We don't like the result, therefore it wasn't socialism.
  - forinti 9y ago
    People have this knee-jerk reaction when you point out similarities between the USSR and capitalist economies, as if they had to be opposites in every dimension of life. Being a worker in a capitalist society (be it a democracy or not) and in the USSR meant, in both cases, that you didn't have much of a say in how your job went. Corporations are not democracies. And if you live in a society in which you don't really have a say or much control, you can't really expect people to care. And this is what my interpretation of TaylorAlexander's argument is. It is also why I think it would only make sense to investigate this matter further if we looked into societies that are different in this respect. Do the Amish take care of each other's stuff better? I don't know, but I would guess so.
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    "The State" exists as much as "Google" or "Microsoft" does. Either of them is run by specific people and has specific interests. And I believe it is generally fruitful to look at an organization of living organisms as a thing in its own right.

by nnfy 9y ago

TaylorAlexander 9y ago

My claim was that people who live in a sharing-based society would in general be more respectful of community property than those who live in a capitalist individualist society. I was not talking about all capitalist societies, just an individualist one. That some capitalist societies are more conscientious than others only lends credibility to my claims. You could have a sharing-based capitalist society, for example. And I agree with the other poster - USSR was not even remotely socialist, it was a state capitalist society. The state owned the means of production. I am more interested in societies where the workers own the means of production - so some kind of Marxism. However my original comment could be satisfied by a capitalist society that chose voluntarily to fund open source robots that provide for human survival - no Marxism required. In a way though, open source is similar to everyone "owning" the information, so in that way open source resembles communist ownership of information.

Godel_unicode 9y ago
You are aware that "the state" isn't a thing, right? "The State" is merely what we call what you're referring to as the workers if it doesn't do what we want it to. The State is just a group of people. This type of revisionist romanticism towards the USSR is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. We don't like the result, therefore it wasn't socialism.
- forinti 9y ago
  People have this knee-jerk reaction when you point out similarities between the USSR and capitalist economies, as if they had to be opposites in every dimension of life. Being a worker in a capitalist society (be it a democracy or not) and in the USSR meant, in both cases, that you didn't have much of a say in how your job went. Corporations are not democracies. And if you live in a society in which you don't really have a say or much control, you can't really expect people to care. And this is what my interpretation of TaylorAlexander's argument is. It is also why I think it would only make sense to investigate this matter further if we looked into societies that are different in this respect. Do the Amish take care of each other's stuff better? I don't know, but I would guess so.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  "The State" exists as much as "Google" or "Microsoft" does. Either of them is run by specific people and has specific interests. And I believe it is generally fruitful to look at an organization of living organisms as a thing in its own right.