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Socialism isn’t when the government does stuff.
by profunctor 7y ago
Socialism isn’t when the government does stuff.
- jandrese 7y agoCorrect, Socialism is when the government does something I don't like.
- sremani 7y agoIn this case rayiner seems to use Socialism as a word contrast to headlines use of Capitalism.
- rayiner 7y agoI agree with that. But the government forcing property owners to let other people use their property at prices set by the government is pretty socialist: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/us-copyright-royalty-board-confirms-44-increase-in-streaming-royalty-on-songs https://completemusicupdate.com/article/us-copyright-royalty.... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board Imagine if we had a government board deciding what prices people could charge for App Store/Google Play Store apps. (It's not like we're talking about radioactive waste or something involving externalities, where government regulation might be justified.)
- dantheman 7y agoTrue - though copyright is a government granted monopoly, so there is a tradeoff. It's not real property. Copyright holders get special privileges granted by the government to control what others do with the copyrighted material, so it only makes sense that it comes with strings attached.
- rayiner 7y agoAll property is a government granted monopoly. The government threatens violence to keep people from copying music. The government also threatens violence to keep people from copying apps, from farming in your back yard, from copying all the JS assets from your website, etc. All business models are built on the government preventing people from doing what they could naturally do.
- antepodius 7y agoWell, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to defend their property. They might lose or decide it's a losing battle, of course.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Well, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to defend their property. No, it's to fight for what they want (or perhaps think they are entitled to) to control. “Property” is simply what the government says you are entitled to control.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoEh, by that logic "murder" is simply who the government says you're not allowed to kill. In the absence of all other criteria, that would be true, but theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws.
- baq 7y agoNatural law is the same thing as natural products. Impossible to define at best. Law needs enforcement to be law, otherwise it’s just words.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoSo if the government collapses, is murder still murder, or do we have to use different words? I posit that something need not be objectively defined to be meaningful. We have the intersubjective for that.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws. Sure, everyone had their own theory of rights. And if by people acting to defend their property you mean “people will fight to secure access to those things to which their own personal theory of rights holds them to be entitled”, well, you’ll notice that's exactly what I described, but not at all what people mean when discussing “property” normally.
- disintegore 7y agoSocialism invalidates the concept of intellectual property. Find another boogeyman.
- Covzire 7y agoMy crack at it: Greed is economic theory agnostic. When an artist only makes pennies per album sold while the publishers reap dollars, it seems pretty obvious where the issue lies. The music industry has been corrupt to the core for many decades, kept alive only by it's sheer objective value through people's love for music.
- disintegore 7y agoHard disagree. Greed may very well be a learned behavior. You cannot expect people, on a large scale at least, to eschew the kind of practices that are encouraged by the mode of production they live in. You cannot expect virtue when it is consistently punished, and the adverse behavior consistently rewarded. Spotify underpays artists because that is what winning companies do. Spotify is playing the game correctly.
- rayiner 7y agoIf anything, private ownership of intellectual property is far more defensible under socialism than real property. Intellectual property is all the product of someone's labor. Real property, by contrast, involves dedicating to private use something that was pre-existing that nobody personally created.
- disintegore 7y agoMany of the works that are protected by IP law, arguably most of those that are created for commercial purposes, are the product of many people's labor. The abolition of private property and profit motive renders IP law useless. Unless there's something you're seeing that I'm not.