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That's a pretty useless quote. It entirely ignores the fact the economic systems all exist on a spectrum from extreme libertarianism to complete state ownership

That's a pretty useless quote. It entirely ignores the fact the economic systems all exist on a spectrum from extreme libertarianism to complete state ownership. The question has never been capitalism versus socialism, it's always been "how much regulation do we want as a society in exchange for a higher floor in our quality of life?" (and its follow up, did that regulation actually achieve its goals?)

cs702 4y ago
I find it useful. My take from it is that capitalism requires patches to work, because otherwise it becomes too horrible for too many: "The worst."
oneoff786 4y ago
That framing seems poorly equipped to handle things like feudalism.
- Octoth0rpe 4y ago
  Hm. I've always thought of feudalism as a form of state ownership wrt to property/means of production, though there are definitely additional considerations re: other rights; the state in that case being the feudal estate.
  - tolciho 4y ago
    Charles Boix in "Political Order and Inequality" posits that feudalism is a particular form of "the looters are in charge, because they can be" as contrasted with the more rare republic where there is more equality among the power-sharing producers. Republics can involve various shades of "republic at home, looters abroad" e.g. the Athens of Perilces. Republics are not very common nor large nor long-lived, at least up until the 18th century or so. Military technology and who can afford it is a big factor. More to the original topic, republics per Boix must prevent looting from the producers; this includes both external agents--"special military operations", barbarians on the frontier, foreign commercial agents who banana your republic, etc--and internal agents, who could be those welfare queens, men out of a job and certainly not looking (I mean why would you??), or plutocrats making out like bandits.
dbingham 4y ago
It's not just a spectrum from Libertarian Free Market to State Socialism. There are many other forms of economic system. Capitalism isn't even synonymous with free markets. Capitalism just speaks to who gets to own the businesses (those with the capital). There are alternatives other than "the state". Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful. Which means one economic system that isn't often spoken about might be described as "Free Market Socialism", in which businesses are governed democratically by their workers in a free market. That system doesn't really fit on the above referenced spectrum.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Octoth0rpe 4y ago
  I agree with everything you're saying. My reference to free market -> state socialism as a spectrum I think is still valid, but is only one axis upon which an economic system can be evaluated. Syndicalism, worker coops of course exist and are distinct from each other, but those both still exist on a spectrum from a free for all to state ownership. Admittedly I did conflate things a bit with my point about raising the floor on quality of life though.
  - dbingham 4y ago
    Sure, you could have a Free Market Socialist economy in which there are sectors of the economy managed by the state. And that there's a lot to tease out in terms of what level of the state is doing the management (municipal utilities vs a national health care system, for instance). This is also true of Capitalism. But it's not like Free Market Socialism sits in the middle of the spectrum from Capitalist Free Market to State Socialism. If anything it exists on a separate spectrum entirely where you're taken the variable "ownership of business" and flipped it to "workers". And then there's a different variable that forms the axis "how much of the economy is state managed". But even the question of "how much" is the wrong one here. A much more valuable question is "which sectors" are state managed and why. And, as referenced above, at what level of the state. And then there's the question of what kind of state we're dealing with (democratic or authoritarian) and how it's organized. I think these sorts of things are why I don't generally find spectrums helpful when it comes to economics, politics, and policy. Then tend to boil down complex systems to single features of those systems. But the impact of those features depends heavily on the other pieces in the system. It's a feature of complex systems that tweaking a single variable can have unexpected consequences because it's heavily impacted by the state of the other variables in the system. I think, in general, it's more useful to describe the systems as coherent objects with certain sets of features. Even trying a multi-dimensional map gets tricky fast.

cs702 4y ago

I find it useful. My take from it is that capitalism requires patches to work, because otherwise it becomes too horrible for too many: "The worst."

oneoff786 4y ago

That framing seems poorly equipped to handle things like feudalism.

Octoth0rpe 4y ago
Hm. I've always thought of feudalism as a form of state ownership wrt to property/means of production, though there are definitely additional considerations re: other rights; the state in that case being the feudal estate.
- tolciho 4y ago
  Charles Boix in "Political Order and Inequality" posits that feudalism is a particular form of "the looters are in charge, because they can be" as contrasted with the more rare republic where there is more equality among the power-sharing producers. Republics can involve various shades of "republic at home, looters abroad" e.g. the Athens of Perilces. Republics are not very common nor large nor long-lived, at least up until the 18th century or so. Military technology and who can afford it is a big factor. More to the original topic, republics per Boix must prevent looting from the producers; this includes both external agents--"special military operations", barbarians on the frontier, foreign commercial agents who banana your republic, etc--and internal agents, who could be those welfare queens, men out of a job and certainly not looking (I mean why would you??), or plutocrats making out like bandits.

dbingham 4y ago

It's not just a spectrum from Libertarian Free Market to State Socialism. There are many other forms of economic system. Capitalism isn't even synonymous with free markets. Capitalism just speaks to who gets to own the businesses (those with the capital). There are alternatives other than "the state". Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful. Which means one economic system that isn't often spoken about might be described as "Free Market Socialism", in which businesses are governed democratically by their workers in a free market. That system doesn't really fit on the above referenced spectrum.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Octoth0rpe 4y ago
I agree with everything you're saying. My reference to free market -> state socialism as a spectrum I think is still valid, but is only one axis upon which an economic system can be evaluated. Syndicalism, worker coops of course exist and are distinct from each other, but those both still exist on a spectrum from a free for all to state ownership. Admittedly I did conflate things a bit with my point about raising the floor on quality of life though.
- dbingham 4y ago
  Sure, you could have a Free Market Socialist economy in which there are sectors of the economy managed by the state. And that there's a lot to tease out in terms of what level of the state is doing the management (municipal utilities vs a national health care system, for instance). This is also true of Capitalism. But it's not like Free Market Socialism sits in the middle of the spectrum from Capitalist Free Market to State Socialism. If anything it exists on a separate spectrum entirely where you're taken the variable "ownership of business" and flipped it to "workers". And then there's a different variable that forms the axis "how much of the economy is state managed". But even the question of "how much" is the wrong one here. A much more valuable question is "which sectors" are state managed and why. And, as referenced above, at what level of the state. And then there's the question of what kind of state we're dealing with (democratic or authoritarian) and how it's organized. I think these sorts of things are why I don't generally find spectrums helpful when it comes to economics, politics, and policy. Then tend to boil down complex systems to single features of those systems. But the impact of those features depends heavily on the other pieces in the system. It's a feature of complex systems that tweaking a single variable can have unexpected consequences because it's heavily impacted by the state of the other variables in the system. I think, in general, it's more useful to describe the systems as coherent objects with certain sets of features. Even trying a multi-dimensional map gets tricky fast.