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I don't get the productivity argument. What productivity is enabled by billionaires or even individuals? Noam Chomsky has covered this, but most corporations be

by bmitc 4y ago

I don't get the productivity argument. What productivity is enabled by billionaires or even individuals? Noam Chomsky has covered this, but most corporations benefit extensively from decades of government funded research and development. The socialist driven productivity is there, it's just that we slap capitalism on it at the end and think it was that that got us here.

jmeister 4y ago
R&D is just one aspect. Productivity refers to general competent management incentivized by market pressure. Anti-capitalists apparently can't even run lemonade stands these days: Ezra Klein: "If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-francisco-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-fr... "Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History" https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/ https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne... https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2021/05/27/basecamp-climbs-out-of-woke-corporate-culture/ https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2021/05/27/basecamp-climbs-...
- pixelfarmer 4y ago
  Well, what is "economy"? Economy exists because we split work, and we do that to optimize taking care of our needs. I make tools for more efficient hunting, you do more efficient hunting with that in order to get food not just for you, but for others, including me, with these. It also means if machines do most of that work there will actually be less economy, but more free time for humans. If you look at what is commonly called "economy", more and more of what is done there actually has a negative real economic value, it effectively hurts humans. The reason behind that is how we measure this economic value: It is completely broken. But as long as people strongly believe in this garbage, everything is focused on that, even it is trailed by chaos and destruction. So capitalism, at least in its current form (neo-liberalism), fails as hard as socialism or communism, for that matter. Reason for that: Humans. I also don't think anyone expects completely equal distribution of everything, but things are so far off in the other corner by now that something needs to be done, fast.
gyulai 4y ago
I think this is referring to a widely used mental model in economics whereby you look at the allocation of resources "other than money". So if you look at a piece of farmland, you look at how many people it feeds and not so much at the fact that person X owns it and person Y needs to pay X for food. The fact that X becomes richer as a side-effect of Y not having to starve triggers our sense of injustice, but at the end, what really matters is that everyone gets fed. If, trying to right such injustices, you end up with an economic system where that piece of land feeds fewer people, you might have done yourself a disservice.

by bmitc 4y ago

jmeister 4y ago

R&D is just one aspect. Productivity refers to general competent management incentivized by market pressure. Anti-capitalists apparently can't even run lemonade stands these days: Ezra Klein: "If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-francisco-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-fr... "Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History" https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/ https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne... https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2021/05/27/basecamp-climbs-out-of-woke-corporate-culture/ https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2021/05/27/basecamp-climbs-...

pixelfarmer 4y ago
Well, what is "economy"? Economy exists because we split work, and we do that to optimize taking care of our needs. I make tools for more efficient hunting, you do more efficient hunting with that in order to get food not just for you, but for others, including me, with these. It also means if machines do most of that work there will actually be less economy, but more free time for humans. If you look at what is commonly called "economy", more and more of what is done there actually has a negative real economic value, it effectively hurts humans. The reason behind that is how we measure this economic value: It is completely broken. But as long as people strongly believe in this garbage, everything is focused on that, even it is trailed by chaos and destruction. So capitalism, at least in its current form (neo-liberalism), fails as hard as socialism or communism, for that matter. Reason for that: Humans. I also don't think anyone expects completely equal distribution of everything, but things are so far off in the other corner by now that something needs to be done, fast.

gyulai 4y ago

I think this is referring to a widely used mental model in economics whereby you look at the allocation of resources "other than money". So if you look at a piece of farmland, you look at how many people it feeds and not so much at the fact that person X owns it and person Y needs to pay X for food. The fact that X becomes richer as a side-effect of Y not having to starve triggers our sense of injustice, but at the end, what really matters is that everyone gets fed. If, trying to right such injustices, you end up with an economic system where that piece of land feeds fewer people, you might have done yourself a disservice.