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> everyone is gonna talk about how we need to give the poor more money Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism".

> everyone is gonna talk about how we need to give the poor more money Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves. This can be achieved by promoting worker control and ownership in the economy, so that when the economy does well so do regular people. There is no need for heavy handed manipulation to achieve this - we currently have plenty of laws subsidizing and promoting non worker-owned businesses. A little support for learning about, starting, and maintaining worker owned businesses would go a long way to ensuring that regular people don't end up poor in the first place. And then when we think of where to spend our tax dollars we can all agree that spending on planting trees is a great use of funds.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves. This is a pretty interesting take. From a Capitalist perspective, people know what they want - and the market is "efficient" when you let people do what they want. There's nothing more efficient than giving people money. From a Socialist perspective - I guess this is obviously wrong? If an economy free of government interventions worked, you wouldn't need Socialism in the first place? So it's better to let the government make investments on your behalf?
- waylandsmithers 3y ago
  I think the point was that a socialist system could provide more services, perhaps to the point where cash transfers wouldn't be necessary
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Let's not conflate the free market, capitalism, and 'capitalist-ism'. I'm not sure I follow your terminology. Unregulated markets are not, in theory or practice, efficient and do not work out to be free markets; they are controlled by the few for their purposes. Government can regulate markets to provide free markets, reducing barriers to entry and requiring competition; they also can provide safety and public good by preventing harm to the public by fraud or injury. Another way to think of it is that power (over the market) is conserved; the question is, who has it, a few participants acting in their interests or the people acting in theirs? A well-regulated market is better and freer for almost all participants than an unregulated one. Regulation is not socialism; socialism is the collective or government ownership of economic assets. For example, the US government regulates GM, Ford, etc., but does not own them. Capitalism is ownership of economic assets by private entities, called capitalists.
- mindslight 3y ago
  From an economic perspective: The market is not fully efficient, and it's a horrible assumption to pretend that it is (akin to asserting P = NP). Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. At best we can say it's efficient to some epsilon, but this epsilon is nowhere near negligible at human(e) scales. Legal rights/entitlements are essentially a form of non-fungible wealth that resists the common pattern - being turned into an "asset class", centralized, and packaged up into recurring rent streams collected from wider society. It remains an open question whether the overall trend would be so strongly towards centralization without the continual government handouts powering the financial industry (witness all the whinging about interest rates existing again). But unless that dynamic is actually reformed then non-fungible guarantees seem like a necessary backstop for maintaining distributed power throughout society.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. Agreed, to recycle a comment [0] in the same vein: > On Monday, capital-C-Capitalism is celebrated as being the most efficient and economist-approved system (i.e. the bestest) when--if--there is somehow perfect price/deal information available to all actors. > On Tuesday, no-True-Capitalism is lauded as immune to cartels and collusion, because any actor will quickly undercut the others with secret prices and deals and hidden identities and wash-trading. > On Wednesday, Virtuous Capitalism needs no oversight because nasty behavior will be seen and detected by consumers who will vote with their wallets. > On Thursday, Property-Respecting Capitalism refuses to infringe on the owners' essential freedom... to construct impenetrable webs of shifting corporate ownership to obfuscate all controlling relationships. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257
barbazoo 3y ago
Interesting, this applies to people in employment. When I read the word poor, I was thinking of people experiencing homelessness who usually are unemployed. But there are lots of working poor too.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Indeed there are lots of working poor in the USA. And if people had more of a stake in the economy when they are employed, they’d have more income to deal with changes in employment rather than ending up homeless.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves. This is a pretty interesting take. From a Capitalist perspective, people know what they want - and the market is "efficient" when you let people do what they want. There's nothing more efficient than giving people money. From a Socialist perspective - I guess this is obviously wrong? If an economy free of government interventions worked, you wouldn't need Socialism in the first place? So it's better to let the government make investments on your behalf?

waylandsmithers 3y ago
I think the point was that a socialist system could provide more services, perhaps to the point where cash transfers wouldn't be necessary
wolverine876 3y ago
Let's not conflate the free market, capitalism, and 'capitalist-ism'. I'm not sure I follow your terminology. Unregulated markets are not, in theory or practice, efficient and do not work out to be free markets; they are controlled by the few for their purposes. Government can regulate markets to provide free markets, reducing barriers to entry and requiring competition; they also can provide safety and public good by preventing harm to the public by fraud or injury. Another way to think of it is that power (over the market) is conserved; the question is, who has it, a few participants acting in their interests or the people acting in theirs? A well-regulated market is better and freer for almost all participants than an unregulated one. Regulation is not socialism; socialism is the collective or government ownership of economic assets. For example, the US government regulates GM, Ford, etc., but does not own them. Capitalism is ownership of economic assets by private entities, called capitalists.
mindslight 3y ago
From an economic perspective: The market is not fully efficient, and it's a horrible assumption to pretend that it is (akin to asserting P = NP). Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. At best we can say it's efficient to some epsilon, but this epsilon is nowhere near negligible at human(e) scales. Legal rights/entitlements are essentially a form of non-fungible wealth that resists the common pattern - being turned into an "asset class", centralized, and packaged up into recurring rent streams collected from wider society. It remains an open question whether the overall trend would be so strongly towards centralization without the continual government handouts powering the financial industry (witness all the whinging about interest rates existing again). But unless that dynamic is actually reformed then non-fungible guarantees seem like a necessary backstop for maintaining distributed power throughout society.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. Agreed, to recycle a comment [0] in the same vein: > On Monday, capital-C-Capitalism is celebrated as being the most efficient and economist-approved system (i.e. the bestest) when--if--there is somehow perfect price/deal information available to all actors. > On Tuesday, no-True-Capitalism is lauded as immune to cartels and collusion, because any actor will quickly undercut the others with secret prices and deals and hidden identities and wash-trading. > On Wednesday, Virtuous Capitalism needs no oversight because nasty behavior will be seen and detected by consumers who will vote with their wallets. > On Thursday, Property-Respecting Capitalism refuses to infringe on the owners' essential freedom... to construct impenetrable webs of shifting corporate ownership to obfuscate all controlling relationships. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257

barbazoo 3y ago

Interesting, this applies to people in employment. When I read the word poor, I was thinking of people experiencing homelessness who usually are unemployed. But there are lots of working poor too.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Indeed there are lots of working poor in the USA. And if people had more of a stake in the economy when they are employed, they’d have more income to deal with changes in employment rather than ending up homeless.