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> There's also no real reason why you can't have prices in socialism There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new. Imagine the new mac

by 1996 6y ago

> There's also no real reason why you can't have prices in socialism There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new. Imagine the new macbook air with Apple Silicon. What should the price be, in a socialist system? Set it too low and there will be shortage because you will not be able to produce enough as you wont get profits that would allow you to build extra factories and by extra components. Set it too high and there will be surpluses rotting in factories because nobody will want it. You need to guess right in advance. In a capitalist system, companies hold the responsibility: if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt. In a socialist system, the responsibility is diluted, resulting in a cumulative overall inefficiency, with both shortage (ex: food in the USSR) and surpluses (ex: cotton in the USSR again). I used "new things" to simplify the reasoning, but the same logic apply to existing things: do you want more or less say phones compared to last year? You can't say "just as much", because the optimal amount will be impacted by a lot of things that change every year.

thesuitonym 6y ago
> if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt. Unless they're banks, or auto manufacturers, or any other huge corporation that would get bailed out by the government. Wonder why that bailing out is a problem for socialist governments, but not capitalist ones.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  it is a huge problem because it transforms a market into an oligarchy where profits are privatized and losses are socialized.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  Bailing out big corporations is an exception, not the norm and it normally results in the government taking up ownership of the corporation. In Germany, the Hypovereinsbank which got bailed out became state-owned.
wongarsu 6y ago
The government is paying the people for labor, the people pay the government for the goods they buy. That can totally include the feedback loop that well-selling goods get allocated more resources because they made a bigger "profit". Of course often it wasn't implemented that way, but it sounds like the Chilean system would have done that.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Thats what a company does in a market. The problem with asking the government to do the same thing is that they need to stop coercing people to comply with threats of violence. If they don't do that, then they are merely another corporation. We don't see this as a problem but getting the people with guns to stop using them to extort behavior they want is a devilishly hard problem.
- beerandt 6y ago
  This is just converting every business into the ultimate "too big to fail" entity that is the government.
shirakawasuna 6y ago
> There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new. Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. Contrasting the two is actually a bit absurd, given that socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital. e.g., market socialists exist. So do central planning-pushing communists. So do communalists...
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species. > socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital. the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    > False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species. Capitalism doesn't do that either. This entire comparison is a category error. In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid. > the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about. > all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property. > but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that? Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc. Rojava is doing an experiment in communalism as we speak. Turkey is bombing it once the US got what they wanted from Rojava (fighting ISIS). Chile elected Allende, who was coup'd within two years by CIA-backed Pinochet. EZLN survives through the weakness of the central Mexican government and their relative irrelevance to capitalists. Most political systems do not actually allow for the election of such parties to power. They have powerful propaganda campaigns baked into their education and mass media systems, with bourgeois infighting characterized as the extent of acceptable debate. Many force a two-party duopoly where only bourgeois parties have any chance of winning. Many outlaw socialist/communist parties or kill and harass their leaders. Many aren't democracies at all and would require an ideological military process to establish it - and have their opposition strategically funded by Western powers. There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.

by 1996 6y ago

thesuitonym 6y ago

> if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt. Unless they're banks, or auto manufacturers, or any other huge corporation that would get bailed out by the government. Wonder why that bailing out is a problem for socialist governments, but not capitalist ones.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
it is a huge problem because it transforms a market into an oligarchy where profits are privatized and losses are socialized.
cbmuser 6y ago
Bailing out big corporations is an exception, not the norm and it normally results in the government taking up ownership of the corporation. In Germany, the Hypovereinsbank which got bailed out became state-owned.

wongarsu 6y ago

The government is paying the people for labor, the people pay the government for the goods they buy. That can totally include the feedback loop that well-selling goods get allocated more resources because they made a bigger "profit". Of course often it wasn't implemented that way, but it sounds like the Chilean system would have done that.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Thats what a company does in a market. The problem with asking the government to do the same thing is that they need to stop coercing people to comply with threats of violence. If they don't do that, then they are merely another corporation. We don't see this as a problem but getting the people with guns to stop using them to extort behavior they want is a devilishly hard problem.
beerandt 6y ago
This is just converting every business into the ultimate "too big to fail" entity that is the government.

shirakawasuna 6y ago

> There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new. Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. Contrasting the two is actually a bit absurd, given that socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital. e.g., market socialists exist. So do central planning-pushing communists. So do communalists...

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species. > socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital. the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
- shirakawasuna 6y ago
  > False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species. Capitalism doesn't do that either. This entire comparison is a category error. In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid. > the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about. > all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property. > but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that? Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc. Rojava is doing an experiment in communalism as we speak. Turkey is bombing it once the US got what they wanted from Rojava (fighting ISIS). Chile elected Allende, who was coup'd within two years by CIA-backed Pinochet. EZLN survives through the weakness of the central Mexican government and their relative irrelevance to capitalists. Most political systems do not actually allow for the election of such parties to power. They have powerful propaganda campaigns baked into their education and mass media systems, with bourgeois infighting characterized as the extent of acceptable debate. Many force a two-party duopoly where only bourgeois parties have any chance of winning. Many outlaw socialist/communist parties or kill and harass their leaders. Many aren't democracies at all and would require an ideological military process to establish it - and have their opposition strategically funded by Western powers. There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.