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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

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
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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.
friedman23 4y ago
> Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful Ha sure. Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? Socialism is a sad joke, socialists group under a banner that does not even exist in reality. Socialism: social control of the means of production What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other. // // // edit: because I'm getting rate limited because socialists like to flag posts they disagree with, my response to the post below: > Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known Small private corporations that are worker run under capitalism is a very unique definition of socialism. Socialism under the silly wikipedia definition you provided mandates social ownership of the means of production. For something to be considered socialist, property rights need to be abolished and "control" needs to be redistributed in some manner. Of course "control" is in quotes because under socialism nobody owns anything, "society" owns it. Workers don't really have control either because they can't choose to sell their control, that would obviously just be capitalism with extra steps. Nobody ever actually explains the details of any of this. The communist manifesto gets close because Marx clearly understood that to steal from people you need to kill them but he never actually prescribes the details of running the damn thing after killing all the property owners. > In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others In other words you did not contradict anything I said. > Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe. Perfectly successful under what definition? Neither the US or Europe have complete social control of the means of production and the little control they do exert is widely known to be extremely wasteful and inefficient. > Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure The roads are terrible and filled with pot holes in San Francisco. The sidewalks are covered in shit. The storm drains did not function when a small storm passed the city. Please don't tell me they need more money to fix those problems.
- dbingham 4y ago
  Ignorance and self satisfaction, always a great combination those. I debated whether to even respond, but decided I would for those reading along. > Ha sure. Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known. It's effectively the GE of worker cooperatives. It's based in Spain, functions across numerous verticals and has 80,000 worker owners and total annual revenue around 12 billion euros. One you might be more familiar with is Equal Exchange[2] - yes, the tea, coffee, and chocolate company. They have 126 employees, annual revenue of around $70 million, and national distribution. Those are just two examples, there are hundreds more. You can scoff all you want, but these companies exist and are successful. They show that companies owned and governed by their employees can operate perfectly efficiently and compete in the marketplace. > Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? It's interesting to note that nowhere in my comment did I imply support for socialism. I merely mentioned its existence as a system, in the context of a conversation about boiling down the world of economic systems to a spectrum. Interesting that the parent commenter found mere mention of its existence triggering. > Socialism: social control of the means of production > What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other. From wikipedia[3]: > Socialism is a left-wing[1] economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership[2] of the means of production[3][4] as opposed to private ownership.[5][6][4] As a term, it describes the economic, political and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.[7] Social ownership can be state/public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.[8][9] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[10] social ownership is the one common element. In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others. And no, socialists don't always end up killing each other. Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe. Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure. Drunk water from your tap? If you're in the US, the water you drink from your tap and the sewer that carries away your waste is almost certainly owned by a municipal utility - again social control. In most of Europe, entire health care systems are run by the state through social control. In other words, state socialism - both municipal and national - has been shown to be perfectly successful when used in the sectors of the economy it's best fit for and on the scale most fitting. As I pointed out above, social control of individual enterprises (worker cooperatives) has also been shown to be perfectly effective. By all means, engage in the debate about what economic systems are the most effective and the least harmful. But if you're going to do it, do your homework first and leave the self satisfaction behind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Exchange [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
yucky 4y ago
> 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. Yes, in capitalism. We have worker coops, there is absolutely nothing in capitalism that prevents or restricts them.
- dbingham 4y ago
  Right, the fact that they are successful in Capitalism presents the possibility of building the entire economy around them. It would be a free market of independent businesses, but those businesses would be governed by the workers involved in them. Financing would happen through loans and crowdfunding, rather than equity. This economic system wouldn't be Capitalism, but it would be a Free Market. It would involve "social control of the means or production", in this case through the workers, so you could call it "Free Market Socialism", and it doesn't fit on the typical spectrum people imagine that goes from Free Market Capitalism to State Socialism.
  - yucky 4y ago
    What would be the advantage of removing sole proprietorships, partnerships etc though? If worker coops are already one existing type of business in a capitalist system, why would we limit ourselves to just that type and remove others?
    - dbingham 4y ago
      Because the goal of the system described above would be a more equitable distribution of economic gains (profits) and control - to avoid the concentration of wealth and power that comes from letting equity (capital) own and control businesses. Concentration of power is corrupting and the concentration of wealth is the concentration of power. It harms society at large. On top of that, work is where most people spend most of their lives. Right now, most people work at businesses that are governed in an autocratic way. Which means, on a very practical level, we're asking most people to spend most of their lives operating in an autocratic context. With respect to Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships. There are some pretty big sole proprietorships and partnerships out there - with lots of employees. The bigger they get, the smaller the contribution of the sole owner or partners to the business vs the rest of the employees and the more the current system gives an unjust distribution of rewards. Sole proprietorships and partnerships wouldn't vanish entirely. They'd just be limited to businesses where the sole owner or partner really could do all the work (or most of it with some of it maybe contracted out to other cooperatives). It's true that the Free Market Socialist system described above probably would undervalue the contributions of founders. But the current system massively undervalues the contribution of the average worker. So it's a net gain in terms of justly and accurately valuing contributions. And Free Market Socialism would result in a much more even distribution of wealth, and therefor power. It wouldn't be perfect, but - personally - I think it would be an improvement.

deleted 4y ago

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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.

friedman23 4y ago

> Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful Ha sure. Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? Socialism is a sad joke, socialists group under a banner that does not even exist in reality. Socialism: social control of the means of production What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other. // // // edit: because I'm getting rate limited because socialists like to flag posts they disagree with, my response to the post below: > Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known Small private corporations that are worker run under capitalism is a very unique definition of socialism. Socialism under the silly wikipedia definition you provided mandates social ownership of the means of production. For something to be considered socialist, property rights need to be abolished and "control" needs to be redistributed in some manner. Of course "control" is in quotes because under socialism nobody owns anything, "society" owns it. Workers don't really have control either because they can't choose to sell their control, that would obviously just be capitalism with extra steps. Nobody ever actually explains the details of any of this. The communist manifesto gets close because Marx clearly understood that to steal from people you need to kill them but he never actually prescribes the details of running the damn thing after killing all the property owners. > In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others In other words you did not contradict anything I said. > Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe. Perfectly successful under what definition? Neither the US or Europe have complete social control of the means of production and the little control they do exert is widely known to be extremely wasteful and inefficient. > Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure The roads are terrible and filled with pot holes in San Francisco. The sidewalks are covered in shit. The storm drains did not function when a small storm passed the city. Please don't tell me they need more money to fix those problems.

dbingham 4y ago
Ignorance and self satisfaction, always a great combination those. I debated whether to even respond, but decided I would for those reading along. > Ha sure. Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known. It's effectively the GE of worker cooperatives. It's based in Spain, functions across numerous verticals and has 80,000 worker owners and total annual revenue around 12 billion euros. One you might be more familiar with is Equal Exchange[2] - yes, the tea, coffee, and chocolate company. They have 126 employees, annual revenue of around $70 million, and national distribution. Those are just two examples, there are hundreds more. You can scoff all you want, but these companies exist and are successful. They show that companies owned and governed by their employees can operate perfectly efficiently and compete in the marketplace. > Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? It's interesting to note that nowhere in my comment did I imply support for socialism. I merely mentioned its existence as a system, in the context of a conversation about boiling down the world of economic systems to a spectrum. Interesting that the parent commenter found mere mention of its existence triggering. > Socialism: social control of the means of production > What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other. From wikipedia[3]: > Socialism is a left-wing[1] economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership[2] of the means of production[3][4] as opposed to private ownership.[5][6][4] As a term, it describes the economic, political and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.[7] Social ownership can be state/public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.[8][9] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[10] social ownership is the one common element. In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others. And no, socialists don't always end up killing each other. Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe. Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure. Drunk water from your tap? If you're in the US, the water you drink from your tap and the sewer that carries away your waste is almost certainly owned by a municipal utility - again social control. In most of Europe, entire health care systems are run by the state through social control. In other words, state socialism - both municipal and national - has been shown to be perfectly successful when used in the sectors of the economy it's best fit for and on the scale most fitting. As I pointed out above, social control of individual enterprises (worker cooperatives) has also been shown to be perfectly effective. By all means, engage in the debate about what economic systems are the most effective and the least harmful. But if you're going to do it, do your homework first and leave the self satisfaction behind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Exchange [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

yucky 4y ago

> 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. Yes, in capitalism. We have worker coops, there is absolutely nothing in capitalism that prevents or restricts them.

dbingham 4y ago
Right, the fact that they are successful in Capitalism presents the possibility of building the entire economy around them. It would be a free market of independent businesses, but those businesses would be governed by the workers involved in them. Financing would happen through loans and crowdfunding, rather than equity. This economic system wouldn't be Capitalism, but it would be a Free Market. It would involve "social control of the means or production", in this case through the workers, so you could call it "Free Market Socialism", and it doesn't fit on the typical spectrum people imagine that goes from Free Market Capitalism to State Socialism.
- yucky 4y ago
  What would be the advantage of removing sole proprietorships, partnerships etc though? If worker coops are already one existing type of business in a capitalist system, why would we limit ourselves to just that type and remove others?
  - dbingham 4y ago
    Because the goal of the system described above would be a more equitable distribution of economic gains (profits) and control - to avoid the concentration of wealth and power that comes from letting equity (capital) own and control businesses. Concentration of power is corrupting and the concentration of wealth is the concentration of power. It harms society at large. On top of that, work is where most people spend most of their lives. Right now, most people work at businesses that are governed in an autocratic way. Which means, on a very practical level, we're asking most people to spend most of their lives operating in an autocratic context. With respect to Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships. There are some pretty big sole proprietorships and partnerships out there - with lots of employees. The bigger they get, the smaller the contribution of the sole owner or partners to the business vs the rest of the employees and the more the current system gives an unjust distribution of rewards. Sole proprietorships and partnerships wouldn't vanish entirely. They'd just be limited to businesses where the sole owner or partner really could do all the work (or most of it with some of it maybe contracted out to other cooperatives). It's true that the Free Market Socialist system described above probably would undervalue the contributions of founders. But the current system massively undervalues the contribution of the average worker. So it's a net gain in terms of justly and accurately valuing contributions. And Free Market Socialism would result in a much more even distribution of wealth, and therefor power. It wouldn't be perfect, but - personally - I think it would be an improvement.