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Communism and Capitalism seem like competing ways of allocating resources when they are scarce. Do resources get allocated by central planning, or are they allo

Communism and Capitalism seem like competing ways of allocating resources when they are scarce. Do resources get allocated by central planning, or are they allocated by people trading with each other? When scarcity ends, I'm not sure either of them are valid descriptions any more. You could say it's communism because there is no private property, but with infinite resources why would there be? If someone (say) takes my jetpack, but I can click my fingers and have an identical one appear then what would be the point in "owning" one?

arminiusreturns 6y ago
> Bodily and personal autonomy was also deeply important to Banks, and to his creations: people in the Culture are free to structure both their lives and their bodies as they see fit. > Which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed?” I think one thing about discussions that involve private property is that it is often viewed as just material possesions of an external nature, but to me as a constitutionalist, private property is a concept beyond that, which also applies to the self, whether that is body, mind or otherwise, just as much to external things. I often find my more conservative friends don't articulate this, but it is a source of complications of communication with socialists, etc, who ask the same question you do: whats the big deal about private property? Just a little perspective on the topic, if I may.
p_l 6y ago
Communism doesn't have to involve central planning - in fact, the Soviet Union (if you dug enough) would agree that their economy is State Capitalism.
- gadders 6y ago
  Is this going to be a one true Scotsman type defence of Communism? Happy for you to identify a nation state that has communism without central planning.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Not "one true scotsman", it's more that the whole thing is more nuanced and last century was under the shadow of Soviet Union, which worked exactly like that for most of its existence. But if you drilled down the official materials deep enough, there was acknowledgement that the system was state capitalism, it was just generally wrapped in vague terms of "building socialism, towards communism", etc. etc. Outside of USSR, most other attempts were quickly "removed" from existence. Technically even in socialist countries in USSR sphere you had somewhat market-acting private companies, though the most "ideologically correct" form of them were co-operatives. China is interesting case, with mix of centrally planned and market economy. But I can't provide enough details (though I've seen glorious poster calling on people to start SMBs to build communism :D) to argue either way. Ultimately - Even USSR called the system state capitalism, with a fig leaf that supposedly the people controlled it.
mike_hearn 6y ago
Post-scarcity societies aren't well explored in fiction partly because they are described through the lens of exclusively physical property. The replicators in Star Trek had this problem. People were shown wanting for nothing and having no wages, because they could replicate stuff. The problem is that even today a huge part of the economy is not material production but services of some form, many of which can't be supplied infinitely no matter how fancy your tech gets. If you want an hour of time to get advice advice from the world's best investor, then short of that man choosing to upload his brain into a massively sharded AI or something, his time is scarce and no amount of tech will work around that. And a lot of what capitalism allocates today is even less physical than that: attention and social status. Instagram sometimes feels like an experimental post-scarcity society in which millions of people with abundant material wealth spend their time competing over social status and influence. Fundamentally even in a post-scarcity society there will always be competition for the influence of your ideas, other people's time/attention and of course power over those people. This is why the concept that communism happens with sufficiently advanced technology doesn't make sense to me.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

> Bodily and personal autonomy was also deeply important to Banks, and to his creations: people in the Culture are free to structure both their lives and their bodies as they see fit. > Which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed?” I think one thing about discussions that involve private property is that it is often viewed as just material possesions of an external nature, but to me as a constitutionalist, private property is a concept beyond that, which also applies to the self, whether that is body, mind or otherwise, just as much to external things. I often find my more conservative friends don't articulate this, but it is a source of complications of communication with socialists, etc, who ask the same question you do: whats the big deal about private property? Just a little perspective on the topic, if I may.

p_l 6y ago

Communism doesn't have to involve central planning - in fact, the Soviet Union (if you dug enough) would agree that their economy is State Capitalism.

gadders 6y ago
Is this going to be a one true Scotsman type defence of Communism? Happy for you to identify a nation state that has communism without central planning.
- p_l 6y ago
  Not "one true scotsman", it's more that the whole thing is more nuanced and last century was under the shadow of Soviet Union, which worked exactly like that for most of its existence. But if you drilled down the official materials deep enough, there was acknowledgement that the system was state capitalism, it was just generally wrapped in vague terms of "building socialism, towards communism", etc. etc. Outside of USSR, most other attempts were quickly "removed" from existence. Technically even in socialist countries in USSR sphere you had somewhat market-acting private companies, though the most "ideologically correct" form of them were co-operatives. China is interesting case, with mix of centrally planned and market economy. But I can't provide enough details (though I've seen glorious poster calling on people to start SMBs to build communism :D) to argue either way. Ultimately - Even USSR called the system state capitalism, with a fig leaf that supposedly the people controlled it.

mike_hearn 6y ago

Post-scarcity societies aren't well explored in fiction partly because they are described through the lens of exclusively physical property. The replicators in Star Trek had this problem. People were shown wanting for nothing and having no wages, because they could replicate stuff. The problem is that even today a huge part of the economy is not material production but services of some form, many of which can't be supplied infinitely no matter how fancy your tech gets. If you want an hour of time to get advice advice from the world's best investor, then short of that man choosing to upload his brain into a massively sharded AI or something, his time is scarce and no amount of tech will work around that. And a lot of what capitalism allocates today is even less physical than that: attention and social status. Instagram sometimes feels like an experimental post-scarcity society in which millions of people with abundant material wealth spend their time competing over social status and influence. Fundamentally even in a post-scarcity society there will always be competition for the influence of your ideas, other people's time/attention and of course power over those people. This is why the concept that communism happens with sufficiently advanced technology doesn't make sense to me.