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Conversely, companies that oppose employee unions should hire and employ only shareholders, with a number of shares commensurate with the importance of their wo

Conversely, companies that oppose employee unions should hire and employ only shareholders, with a number of shares commensurate with the importance of their work roles. That door swings both ways. Unions are not an exclusively socialist construct. I support unions as an anarchist, because I recognize that it is both useful for corporations with concentrated capital to exist and necessary to counterbalance their power with opposing institutions to keep their perverse incentives from directing their behavior unchecked. If all social institutions are set up such that they check and balance one another, no single one of them can safely dominate. Each has a time to be supported, and a time to be undermined. For now, government institutions and religious institutions have refused to counter commercial/mercantile institutions, so the lowest-energy path to doing so is reviving the unions. Growing a neo-socialist voting bloc now is a longer play, but that one will be beneficial between 6 and 12 years from now, and probably won't become threatening for 20 years. One can never know in advance; democracy is messy. Socialism is an awful idea in isolation. It's a great idea if your goal is to temporarily undermine those whose power is based on accumulations of wealth and pre-existing social contacts. If you feel that those in power are keeping you from breaking into their ranks, you can promote socialism to clear them out, and then move into their vacated places of power to quash the socialism before it gets out of hand. As I am not one of the elite, and do not currently have any plausible way to become one, I fully support a socialist political movement. For now. My personal morality does not compete well against those whose ethics revolve around "might makes right", "them that has the gold, makes the rules", and "F U, I got mine". So I have a newer rule: to suppress my other ethical rules in all situations where those who do not share them are exploiting my respect for them, and any information asymmetries, in order to influence my behavior to my own detriment. I have no right to the fruits of your labor, but rights are a political construct. They have to be protected by a chain of support, like chess pieces. And right now, someone has sacrificed all of the pawns. The right to keep one's own property weakens in the face of a growing class of people who are somehow completely unable to accumulate significant wealth, even after a lifetime of toil and diligence. Middle class purchasing power has been stagnant since the 70s. That's more than enough time for all those getting screwed by the system to forget why they ever believed in it, and to raise children who never believed in it, who then decide to replace it with literally anything else. The seeds for the democratic socialist resurgence of 2019 were planted in the 1980s and 1990s. Sow sighs; reap gales. I can live with socialism for a few political cycles, if it can clear out some cruft at the top. It's dangerous, and difficult to know when to hit the brakes, but I feel ill used by the current system, and I'm not going to go down with it.

mises 8y ago
> F U, I got mine I don't have mine, but I hope to some day. Under socialism, that won't happen. Here's a great objection: I want to be rich some day. Very rich. I suspect this is the case with many of us. Under socialism, that can't happen. And so, I will never support it. Your whole idea is that socialism will clear out the elites in power. It won't. You'll end up with a bastardized version that oppresses everyone but a few.
- ranie93 8y ago
  “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Somewhat paraphrased / misquoted John Steinbeck, actually: http://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in http://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/comm... https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
  - mises 8y ago
    Yes, and I judge this to be a good thing.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Clear out, no. Replace, yes. The socialism-inspired civil wars of the past did not get rid of elites-in-power as a concept, but they did get rid of some of the specific individuals that previously qualified. Each time, the socialism did significant damage to the economy... as measured by the elites, anyway. Nobody, except those who already got it, has gotten theirs since the 1970s. The theory behind trickle-down economics is demonstrably false. When you give rich people more control over resources and production, they keep all the additional profits, because they can, and then use some of those to gain more control over resources and production. Socialists, while incorrect in many (most?) areas of economics, at least realize that the people who do the work should get paid fairly for it, even if their calculations for "fair" are frequently inaccurate. The socialist war is the ultimate penalty for unfairness in the economy. The system will never find a higher peak without a good, hard kick, off of the local maximum it seems to be stuck on. It doesn't need to be a socialist revolution that does it, and everything would probably be better off if it wasn't them, but they're the only ones that seem to be in position to get the job done now. And once they do, then the non-socialist, non-mercantile-elitist armies may begin to fight, if they have enough numbers, or enough clout with the socialists to steer them away from the cliff peacefully. You're not going to be rich someday, because your parents weren't rich, and you grew up in the wrong postal code. That's the current regime in the US. Accept that, statistically speaking, everyone that has bucked the trend to achieve extreme upward mobility has been in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, and the right skills, to take advantage of an ephemeral opportunity. Most people still can't afford to be prepared for anything, and also look up from their daily toil long enough to recognize an opening. You cannot get rich with a lifetime of hard work and wise investments; if you do that, never make a single mistake, and never get screwed, you can retire comfortably, snugly ensconced in hopefully the higher end of the middle class. It's a fine goal, achievable, and not something socialism does well. You can get rich by getting lucky, and buying the right lottery tickets. You can get rich by abandoning your ethics and screwing over those still attempting hard work over a lifetime. For instance, blow a bubble in the mortgages market and erase the majority of net worth for a lot of middle-class families, and then place bets on how many extra defaults and foreclosures there will be because of it. Nobody went to prison for that. It won't be me that does it, but I definitely won't cry if those even peripherally responsible, and those following in their footsteps, ever get shoved up against the wall. I'm not an elite in this system. I won't be an elite in any system that replaces it, socialist or not. I have accepted that I am a nobody, and will be forgotten before my corpse cools. And I have also accepted that religious fantasies of justice-after-death are bullshit, psychologically crafted to discourage vigilantism and mob behaviors. So when there is an obvious asshole that clearly requires a humility-boosting supplement, for whom the gods fail to send a nemesis, and for whom the prosecutors fail to send marshals, and for whom the helpers fail to send redeeming inspiration, that guy is going to be an exemplar of a strategy for winning the game of life. In the meta-game, successful dickwads encourage other players to become dickwads. I can see the endgame, and I don't win; I don't have enough points, don't have the right cards to play, and I'm not good enough at cheating to not get caught. But I can pick one player that's still in the running, and make it more difficult for them to win.

mises 8y ago

> F U, I got mine I don't have mine, but I hope to some day. Under socialism, that won't happen. Here's a great objection: I want to be rich some day. Very rich. I suspect this is the case with many of us. Under socialism, that can't happen. And so, I will never support it. Your whole idea is that socialism will clear out the elites in power. It won't. You'll end up with a bastardized version that oppresses everyone but a few.

ranie93 8y ago
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Somewhat paraphrased / misquoted John Steinbeck, actually: http://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in http://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/comm... https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
- mises 8y ago
  Yes, and I judge this to be a good thing.
logfromblammo 8y ago
Clear out, no. Replace, yes. The socialism-inspired civil wars of the past did not get rid of elites-in-power as a concept, but they did get rid of some of the specific individuals that previously qualified. Each time, the socialism did significant damage to the economy... as measured by the elites, anyway. Nobody, except those who already got it, has gotten theirs since the 1970s. The theory behind trickle-down economics is demonstrably false. When you give rich people more control over resources and production, they keep all the additional profits, because they can, and then use some of those to gain more control over resources and production. Socialists, while incorrect in many (most?) areas of economics, at least realize that the people who do the work should get paid fairly for it, even if their calculations for "fair" are frequently inaccurate. The socialist war is the ultimate penalty for unfairness in the economy. The system will never find a higher peak without a good, hard kick, off of the local maximum it seems to be stuck on. It doesn't need to be a socialist revolution that does it, and everything would probably be better off if it wasn't them, but they're the only ones that seem to be in position to get the job done now. And once they do, then the non-socialist, non-mercantile-elitist armies may begin to fight, if they have enough numbers, or enough clout with the socialists to steer them away from the cliff peacefully. You're not going to be rich someday, because your parents weren't rich, and you grew up in the wrong postal code. That's the current regime in the US. Accept that, statistically speaking, everyone that has bucked the trend to achieve extreme upward mobility has been in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, and the right skills, to take advantage of an ephemeral opportunity. Most people still can't afford to be prepared for anything, and also look up from their daily toil long enough to recognize an opening. You cannot get rich with a lifetime of hard work and wise investments; if you do that, never make a single mistake, and never get screwed, you can retire comfortably, snugly ensconced in hopefully the higher end of the middle class. It's a fine goal, achievable, and not something socialism does well. You can get rich by getting lucky, and buying the right lottery tickets. You can get rich by abandoning your ethics and screwing over those still attempting hard work over a lifetime. For instance, blow a bubble in the mortgages market and erase the majority of net worth for a lot of middle-class families, and then place bets on how many extra defaults and foreclosures there will be because of it. Nobody went to prison for that. It won't be me that does it, but I definitely won't cry if those even peripherally responsible, and those following in their footsteps, ever get shoved up against the wall. I'm not an elite in this system. I won't be an elite in any system that replaces it, socialist or not. I have accepted that I am a nobody, and will be forgotten before my corpse cools. And I have also accepted that religious fantasies of justice-after-death are bullshit, psychologically crafted to discourage vigilantism and mob behaviors. So when there is an obvious asshole that clearly requires a humility-boosting supplement, for whom the gods fail to send a nemesis, and for whom the prosecutors fail to send marshals, and for whom the helpers fail to send redeeming inspiration, that guy is going to be an exemplar of a strategy for winning the game of life. In the meta-game, successful dickwads encourage other players to become dickwads. I can see the endgame, and I don't win; I don't have enough points, don't have the right cards to play, and I'm not good enough at cheating to not get caught. But I can pick one player that's still in the running, and make it more difficult for them to win.