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The line between large corporations and government is thin at best. If individuals can comfortably enrich themselves from the private sphere while in public off

The line between large corporations and government is thin at best. If individuals can comfortably enrich themselves from the private sphere while in public office, if companies can modify or introduce legislation to their benefit, if even foreign policy can be influenced to benefit parts of the private sector, how can we conclude anything other than power is the outcome of enough money? That’s as an aside. Big companies trend towards authoritarian, communist style bureaucracy due to a desire to centralize decision making (or concentrate power). This is no more effective for a corporation than it is a government. Complexity theory shows us that all the interesting stuff happens on the edge of Chaos. Big companies suck because the desire for control kills the complexity dance.

Bilal_io 3y ago
Did you just use authoritarian and communism in the same sentence to describe big companies? Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people, and by that definition it's the opposite of authoritarian.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  Yes I did. Show me a “communist” state without authoritarianism.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Show me any government that doesn't have some "Authority".
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Authority isn't the same, so this seems pointless.
  - Bilal_io 3y ago
    There are non, because they claim to be "communist" but they're not, just like many authoritarians claim "democracy".
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Has anyone done a fully communist society?
      - randomdata 2y ago
        How would that be possible? Communism is much like Star Trek: An imagining of what the world might look like if we ever were to achieve post-scarcity. As far as anyone knows, we don't have the technology. A "Communist state", meaning a state that is under control of the Communist Party, will claim a goal of working towards achieving post-scarcity, but there has been no such achievement to date.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        I agree that the premise of Communism is impossible. Or rather: it relies on no progress being made, and thus all that's left to do is share out the little that we have. Why then are we discussing an impossible situation? Why not discuss Magicism, where we imagine a world where magic has been discovered, and try to institute political systems right now that rely on this discovery being around the corner?
        randomdata 2y ago
        > Why then are we discussing an impossible situation? The only people discussing it are you and I, and we are discussing it because you brought it up. If you don't know why you wanted to talk about it, I guess the question is unanswerable. Everyone else was quite explicitly talking about Communist states, which means we know that the topic was about states under rule by the Communist Party. That is not an impossible situation. That is a very real situation. But communism has no state. That is one of its defining features. We know that "Communist state" fundamentally cannot refer to communism. > Why not discuss Magicism Well, since you also brought it up, I guess we can. But there is no evidence I am aware of that indicates magic is a thing. I am not sure where you could go with it. Post-scarcity is a thing. According to the UN we are already there when it comes to food. Shelter has been more elusive to get us all the way to "full" post-scarcity, with it still being approximately as difficult to build a house today as 200 years ago, but slow progress is being made. It is quite conceivable that some kind of technology could change the game there, as has already been done for food. Yet, despite already having the technology to lift us from food scarcity, many people go hungry each day. Communists will blame that kind of mismatch on capitalists creating a situation of artificial scarcity. Cases like the Monsanto story, of which you are probably familiar, provide some justification to their perspective. They believe that socialism is the only way to overcome that hurdle in order to pave the way to post-scarcity. Theories can be off base, but one can at least understand where they are coming from. Where do Magicists come from? What is the foundation of their theory?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people That’s actually socialism, which some forms of communism see as a first step toward communism. Communism is…fuzzier. It’s a state of voluntary, classless, non-hierarchical, self-government.

Bilal_io 3y ago

Did you just use authoritarian and communism in the same sentence to describe big companies? Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people, and by that definition it's the opposite of authoritarian.

lll-o-lll 3y ago
Yes I did. Show me a “communist” state without authoritarianism.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Show me any government that doesn't have some "Authority".
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Authority isn't the same, so this seems pointless.
- Bilal_io 3y ago
  There are non, because they claim to be "communist" but they're not, just like many authoritarians claim "democracy".
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Has anyone done a fully communist society?
    - randomdata 2y ago
      How would that be possible? Communism is much like Star Trek: An imagining of what the world might look like if we ever were to achieve post-scarcity. As far as anyone knows, we don't have the technology. A "Communist state", meaning a state that is under control of the Communist Party, will claim a goal of working towards achieving post-scarcity, but there has been no such achievement to date.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        I agree that the premise of Communism is impossible. Or rather: it relies on no progress being made, and thus all that's left to do is share out the little that we have. Why then are we discussing an impossible situation? Why not discuss Magicism, where we imagine a world where magic has been discovered, and try to institute political systems right now that rely on this discovery being around the corner?
        randomdata 2y ago
        > Why then are we discussing an impossible situation? The only people discussing it are you and I, and we are discussing it because you brought it up. If you don't know why you wanted to talk about it, I guess the question is unanswerable. Everyone else was quite explicitly talking about Communist states, which means we know that the topic was about states under rule by the Communist Party. That is not an impossible situation. That is a very real situation. But communism has no state. That is one of its defining features. We know that "Communist state" fundamentally cannot refer to communism. > Why not discuss Magicism Well, since you also brought it up, I guess we can. But there is no evidence I am aware of that indicates magic is a thing. I am not sure where you could go with it. Post-scarcity is a thing. According to the UN we are already there when it comes to food. Shelter has been more elusive to get us all the way to "full" post-scarcity, with it still being approximately as difficult to build a house today as 200 years ago, but slow progress is being made. It is quite conceivable that some kind of technology could change the game there, as has already been done for food. Yet, despite already having the technology to lift us from food scarcity, many people go hungry each day. Communists will blame that kind of mismatch on capitalists creating a situation of artificial scarcity. Cases like the Monsanto story, of which you are probably familiar, provide some justification to their perspective. They believe that socialism is the only way to overcome that hurdle in order to pave the way to post-scarcity. Theories can be off base, but one can at least understand where they are coming from. Where do Magicists come from? What is the foundation of their theory?
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Communism is where the means of production is owned by the people That’s actually socialism, which some forms of communism see as a first step toward communism. Communism is…fuzzier. It’s a state of voluntary, classless, non-hierarchical, self-government.