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If you’re going to be that picky about the definition of “capital” then maybe the question is why would anyone be against farms and factories? :) So okay, for

If you’re going to be that picky about the definition of “capital” then maybe the question is why would anyone be against farms and factories? :) So okay, for capital, substitute “ownership of a claim to the profits from capital.” I think it might be fun to imagine an economic system very different than ours, but I suspect it’s going to need cultural institutions that fulfill similar roles, because they serve human needs and those needs aren’t going away. For example, suppose that in the system you’re imagining, a retired worker goes to the store to get something to eat. Presumably, the collective has a worker making sure that nobody takes more than their fair share, or otherwise it’s all going to disappear. So the retiree has present some kind of abstract claim showing what they’re entitled to. It’s going to serve a similar role to retirement savings. How does it work? When you retire, how secure is your claim? How much can you get, and what happens when political institutions change? I think it’s easier to talk about such things in terms of familiar institutions that we understand well, but with the understanding that there could be different approaches, in theory.

immibis 2y ago
Nobody is against farms and factories in general. Some people are against some specific farms and factories, such as for environmental reasons. Many people are against the way the government chooses to allocate control of farms and factories (based on tradeable scrip).
dragonwriter 2y ago
> If you’re going to be that picky about the definition of “capital” then maybe the question is why would anyone be against farms and factories? No one is against farms and factories. Some people are against ownership of farms and factories by private parties separate from working in them. > For example, suppose that in the system you’re imagining, a retired worker goes to the store to get something to eat. Then they pay money for it. Which likely comes out of a retirement pension. > So the retiree has present some kind of abstract claim showing what they’re entitled to. That "abstract claim" is called "money", and exists separate from (and predates) capitalist property structures, and does not rely on private ownership of the means of production. > It’s going to serve a similar role to retirement savings. How does it work? When you retire, how secure is your claim? How much can you get, and what happens when political institutions change? No claim is resilient to change of political institutions; systems of property rights are themselves political institutions. > I think it’s easier to talk about such things in terms of familiar institutions that we understand well Yes, but the problem is that you are confusing entirely different institutions that do not rely on each other, simply because they happen to coexist in the system you are most familiar with (though that is not universally historically the case.) "Capital", "money", and "some form of provision for retirement" are not the same thing.
- skybrian 2y ago
  When people start talking about economic systems other than capitalism, I’m never really sure how different those systems are supposed to be, so thanks for clarifying that your imagined system does include money. I’m still pretty unclear on how it works, though. Who makes decisions about factories and farms and how do they get funding? What are the sources and sinks for money in this system? (For example, one simple model has money being created via government spending and drained via taxes. The taxes create the demand for money.)
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Who makes decisions about factories and farms and how do they get funding? The least dissimilar version to the modern mixed economies that dominate the West currently would be a system in which the firms employing workers were (in the ideal state; real systems -- even "capitalist" ones -- are rarely platonic ideals of the underlying concept, and so in practice exceptions, e.g., for sole proprietorships of certain scale and with defined worker rights, are possible as a matter of convenience rather than right) universally labor coops; "financial capital", which is not capital in the sense being discussed, would still exist, but labor would rent financial capital rather than capital renting labor; money would be essentially unchanged from how it works in the modern West.

immibis 2y ago

Nobody is against farms and factories in general. Some people are against some specific farms and factories, such as for environmental reasons. Many people are against the way the government chooses to allocate control of farms and factories (based on tradeable scrip).

dragonwriter 2y ago

> If you’re going to be that picky about the definition of “capital” then maybe the question is why would anyone be against farms and factories? No one is against farms and factories. Some people are against ownership of farms and factories by private parties separate from working in them. > For example, suppose that in the system you’re imagining, a retired worker goes to the store to get something to eat. Then they pay money for it. Which likely comes out of a retirement pension. > So the retiree has present some kind of abstract claim showing what they’re entitled to. That "abstract claim" is called "money", and exists separate from (and predates) capitalist property structures, and does not rely on private ownership of the means of production. > It’s going to serve a similar role to retirement savings. How does it work? When you retire, how secure is your claim? How much can you get, and what happens when political institutions change? No claim is resilient to change of political institutions; systems of property rights are themselves political institutions. > I think it’s easier to talk about such things in terms of familiar institutions that we understand well Yes, but the problem is that you are confusing entirely different institutions that do not rely on each other, simply because they happen to coexist in the system you are most familiar with (though that is not universally historically the case.) "Capital", "money", and "some form of provision for retirement" are not the same thing.

skybrian 2y ago
When people start talking about economic systems other than capitalism, I’m never really sure how different those systems are supposed to be, so thanks for clarifying that your imagined system does include money. I’m still pretty unclear on how it works, though. Who makes decisions about factories and farms and how do they get funding? What are the sources and sinks for money in this system? (For example, one simple model has money being created via government spending and drained via taxes. The taxes create the demand for money.)
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Who makes decisions about factories and farms and how do they get funding? The least dissimilar version to the modern mixed economies that dominate the West currently would be a system in which the firms employing workers were (in the ideal state; real systems -- even "capitalist" ones -- are rarely platonic ideals of the underlying concept, and so in practice exceptions, e.g., for sole proprietorships of certain scale and with defined worker rights, are possible as a matter of convenience rather than right) universally labor coops; "financial capital", which is not capital in the sense being discussed, would still exist, but labor would rent financial capital rather than capital renting labor; money would be essentially unchanged from how it works in the modern West.