3 ms·

> What exactly would the quantitative "score" be to measure between the qualitative systems of Capitalism and Socialism? Well, isn't this exactly what people t

> What exactly would the quantitative "score" be to measure between the qualitative systems of Capitalism and Socialism? Well, isn't this exactly what people try to do when comparing these systems? Number of deaths, number of people in poverty, number of products on the shelves in stores? > Between Buddhism and Christianity? You can count the number of atrocities perpetrated by each. The number of scandals involving their priests. The total number of adherents. > what exactly is the numerical "dose" between qualitatively different systems? That is the whole point of my post. Defining how to turn a qualitative measure into a quantitate measure is the real and only trick. I chose some arbitrary ones in response to your examples. You may choose different ones. Maybe you choose to measure capitalism and socialism based on some psychological happiness score defined as responses to some survey. Maybe you measure it by GDP. Choosing your measure is the real power.

claudiawerner 7y ago
>Well, isn't this exactly what people try to do when comparing these systems? Number of deaths, number of people in poverty, number of products on the shelves in stores? Not necessarily. Qualitative models have been increasingly adopted, and most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living, it is responsible for a huge range of products, and that 20th c. socialism lead to many deaths. Qualitative criticisms are the most popular today in political economy, namely, the work of Sen, Roemer, Vrousalis and others on qualitative (with some quantitative basis) concepts of "exploitation", "domination", "alienation", and "fetishism". Nevertheless, quantitative arguments are also abound, in particular debate over what classifies as "poverty", and the transformation of values to prices of production (usually formulated mathematically). The road to defining axiomitically concepts like "exploitation" still has "a million miles to go" (Veneziani and Yoshihara). This area of criticism, in my opinion (and the opinion of Honkanen[0]), needs more quantitative reasoning, and qualitative thinking cannot simply brush aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all) instances. [0] Honkanen P. (2020) The Transformation Problem and Value-Form: Methodological Comments. In: Silver M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
- reggieband 7y ago
  > most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living All that shows, IMO of course, is there is some common ground between capitalists and socialists when defining some objective quantitative measures. In a sense, we first agree on the rules of some game (i.e. the quantitative indicators of our qualitative desires) and then we turn the crank of the mathematical machine to see what scores the best. > qualitative thinking cannot simply brush aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all) instances. I agree on this but in a subtle way. Analogies are the worst but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like a boat that has both a rudder and an engine. In this analogy the rudder is qualitative reasoning and the engine is quantitative reasoning. We use qualitative reasoning to "pick a direction" and quantitative reasoning to "move towards the goal". I sometimes think both sides are missing the fact we need both. A rudder without an engine doesn't get anywhere and an engine without a rudder moves aimlessly. My original argument was that the engine at this point is pretty well known: logic, science, math and computation. However, choosing good qualitative measures and then choosing good methods to convert them into quantitive measures is really difficult. You mentioned that quantifying "domination" or "exploitation" is tricky. I believe that choosing "domination" as your qualitative measure (before you even try to quantify it) is the really difficult thing. So often we go into quantitative mode with very little consideration why we chose the qualitative measures we are using. It makes me think of Habermas and his work on communicative rationality (another topic I'm very weak on). I'm not sure that is the right tool but I think we need a set of agreed upon tools other than quantitative reasoning to help us solve disagreements on qualitative measures.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  20th century capitalism also led to many deaths. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-model https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/commun... https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-or-capitalism https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-... And the death count for "socialism" usually includes Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany, all of which were primarily nationalist governments - in the same way that North Korea is actually a very old-fashioned hereditary absolute monarchy decorated with Stalinist branding. The closest economies to real socialism are the high-taxation, high-spending Scandinavian social democracies, which score higher than the US on educational attainment, business opportunity, life-expectancy, and educational attainment - but don't do nearly as well at generating billionaires. The real foundation of social democracy is aggressive wealth redistribution and broad democratic access to policy - not state control. In reality capitalism is far more controlled than social democracy because it operates as a plutocracy that privileges a small demographic. This demographic has exclusive control over policy through lobbying, "funding" of representatives, and the creation and propagation of economic (i.e. "moral") narratives that benefit them - irrespective of party labels. Against this background, the fact that academics may be debating what exploitation means is very much a side issue.

claudiawerner 7y ago

>Well, isn't this exactly what people try to do when comparing these systems? Number of deaths, number of people in poverty, number of products on the shelves in stores? Not necessarily. Qualitative models have been increasingly adopted, and most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living, it is responsible for a huge range of products, and that 20th c. socialism lead to many deaths. Qualitative criticisms are the most popular today in political economy, namely, the work of Sen, Roemer, Vrousalis and others on qualitative (with some quantitative basis) concepts of "exploitation", "domination", "alienation", and "fetishism". Nevertheless, quantitative arguments are also abound, in particular debate over what classifies as "poverty", and the transformation of values to prices of production (usually formulated mathematically). The road to defining axiomitically concepts like "exploitation" still has "a million miles to go" (Veneziani and Yoshihara). This area of criticism, in my opinion (and the opinion of Honkanen[0]), needs more quantitative reasoning, and qualitative thinking cannot simply brush aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all) instances. [0] Honkanen P. (2020) The Transformation Problem and Value-Form: Methodological Comments. In: Silver M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

reggieband 7y ago
> most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living All that shows, IMO of course, is there is some common ground between capitalists and socialists when defining some objective quantitative measures. In a sense, we first agree on the rules of some game (i.e. the quantitative indicators of our qualitative desires) and then we turn the crank of the mathematical machine to see what scores the best. > qualitative thinking cannot simply brush aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all) instances. I agree on this but in a subtle way. Analogies are the worst but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like a boat that has both a rudder and an engine. In this analogy the rudder is qualitative reasoning and the engine is quantitative reasoning. We use qualitative reasoning to "pick a direction" and quantitative reasoning to "move towards the goal". I sometimes think both sides are missing the fact we need both. A rudder without an engine doesn't get anywhere and an engine without a rudder moves aimlessly. My original argument was that the engine at this point is pretty well known: logic, science, math and computation. However, choosing good qualitative measures and then choosing good methods to convert them into quantitive measures is really difficult. You mentioned that quantifying "domination" or "exploitation" is tricky. I believe that choosing "domination" as your qualitative measure (before you even try to quantify it) is the really difficult thing. So often we go into quantitative mode with very little consideration why we chose the qualitative measures we are using. It makes me think of Habermas and his work on communicative rationality (another topic I'm very weak on). I'm not sure that is the right tool but I think we need a set of agreed upon tools other than quantitative reasoning to help us solve disagreements on qualitative measures.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
20th century capitalism also led to many deaths. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-model https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/commun... https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-or-capitalism https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-... And the death count for "socialism" usually includes Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany, all of which were primarily nationalist governments - in the same way that North Korea is actually a very old-fashioned hereditary absolute monarchy decorated with Stalinist branding. The closest economies to real socialism are the high-taxation, high-spending Scandinavian social democracies, which score higher than the US on educational attainment, business opportunity, life-expectancy, and educational attainment - but don't do nearly as well at generating billionaires. The real foundation of social democracy is aggressive wealth redistribution and broad democratic access to policy - not state control. In reality capitalism is far more controlled than social democracy because it operates as a plutocracy that privileges a small demographic. This demographic has exclusive control over policy through lobbying, "funding" of representatives, and the creation and propagation of economic (i.e. "moral") narratives that benefit them - irrespective of party labels. Against this background, the fact that academics may be debating what exploitation means is very much a side issue.