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I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. >>>Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. T

I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. >>>Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. >>>There is no value without labor. The great thing Marx did was show that everything could be converted to a value measured by labor. But, economists afterwards showed that once you have that conversion, you can do it literally with anything. We could have a system based on the number of bumblebees required to build a house. That is a normative judgement that labor is somehow special. Now, our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment. But it has brought the standard of living up across the entire world past a Malthusian cycle of more food means more people, means they eat the food, and we have starvation. The same can be said for current implementations of Communism all across the globe. Lastly, cooperatives may be a great solution for a lot of manufacturing and housing challenges. And when you get to the scale of a country, a co-op is just a government, and a capitalistic democracy feels a lot more like a co-op than a dictatorship or authoritarianism even with all its pitfalls. A populous who then really starts to demand through votes that we change to improve the blight of our fellow humans seems an even better place to live, if we can just get there.

eightysixfour 2y ago
>>> Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. >> There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. I read the OPs post as an example of propoganda (mega corp - capitalism, small company - socialism) not reality.
- sweeter 2y ago
  Same here. It's to display the hypocrisy of those in power who declare things in their favor as beneficial and those that are not beneficial as harmful and bad. In reality it's almost the opposite, it's bootstrap capitalism for the little guys, and "socialism" and government handouts for the ultra wealthy. (I put socialism in quotes because this term is extremely commonly misused.)
jmyeet 2y ago
> I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. It's an oversimplification to highlight the main point: workers' relationship to the means of production. In capitalism, capital owners own the means of production. In socialism, the workers own the means of production. IME most Americans not only don't know what socialism is (despite being opposed to it), they don't know what capitalism is either (despite supporting it). > Now, our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment. It's doing an awful lot more than that. It's pillaging the Global South. It's impoverishing us under the massive weight of housing, medical and student debt. And it's quite literally killing people. People decry the failures of the USSR, for example, but 9 million people die of starvation every year. Why isn't this attributed as a failure of capitalism in the same way?
- gengwyn 2y ago
  Because the failures of the USSR occurred entirely within the USSR's borders, under its jurisdiction, and were entirely within its power to resolve. Meanwhile, the 9 million deaths of starvation you cite are across multiple countries with multiple overlapping legal regimes and are multi-causal, from corruption to war and failed states like Haiti and Syria.
  - kylestlb 2y ago
    This isn't the ringing endorsement of global capitalism that you think it is
WalterBright 2y ago
> our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment Communist countries are the most polluted ones.
- kylestlb 2y ago
  "communist" countries are simply countries that are still operating within Global Capitalism that happen to be run by parties that are made up of communists. They would also freely admit that. There are no communist countries because communism isn't here yet.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    I know. Every failure of communism is because it wasn't really communist! I wonder where the tipping point of "true" communism is? Because the closer one gets to communism, the worse the results. Free markets, on the other hand, work even if they aren't perfect. The more free they are, the better they work.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      On the other hand, countries with more regulated markets such as European nations, the U.K. and Commonwealth nations, and Japan and some of the East Asian Tigers might have less pollution than the United States. You get Americans importing EU baby formula because they are more restrictive about what chemical additives can go into them. Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position?
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        > Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? The trouble with calling free markets folly is they are enormously successful, in every place and time where they have been tried. The trouble with central economic planning is it always does badly. BTW, one of the functions of government in a free market is to regulate the externalities - costs of doing business that are not borne by the business. Pollution is the most obvious one of those externalities, so calling a polluting business "extreme free market" is incorrect.

eightysixfour 2y ago

>>> Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. >> There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. I read the OPs post as an example of propoganda (mega corp - capitalism, small company - socialism) not reality.

sweeter 2y ago
Same here. It's to display the hypocrisy of those in power who declare things in their favor as beneficial and those that are not beneficial as harmful and bad. In reality it's almost the opposite, it's bootstrap capitalism for the little guys, and "socialism" and government handouts for the ultra wealthy. (I put socialism in quotes because this term is extremely commonly misused.)

jmyeet 2y ago

> I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. It's an oversimplification to highlight the main point: workers' relationship to the means of production. In capitalism, capital owners own the means of production. In socialism, the workers own the means of production. IME most Americans not only don't know what socialism is (despite being opposed to it), they don't know what capitalism is either (despite supporting it). > Now, our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment. It's doing an awful lot more than that. It's pillaging the Global South. It's impoverishing us under the massive weight of housing, medical and student debt. And it's quite literally killing people. People decry the failures of the USSR, for example, but 9 million people die of starvation every year. Why isn't this attributed as a failure of capitalism in the same way?

gengwyn 2y ago
Because the failures of the USSR occurred entirely within the USSR's borders, under its jurisdiction, and were entirely within its power to resolve. Meanwhile, the 9 million deaths of starvation you cite are across multiple countries with multiple overlapping legal regimes and are multi-causal, from corruption to war and failed states like Haiti and Syria.
- kylestlb 2y ago
  This isn't the ringing endorsement of global capitalism that you think it is

WalterBright 2y ago

> our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment Communist countries are the most polluted ones.

kylestlb 2y ago
"communist" countries are simply countries that are still operating within Global Capitalism that happen to be run by parties that are made up of communists. They would also freely admit that. There are no communist countries because communism isn't here yet.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I know. Every failure of communism is because it wasn't really communist! I wonder where the tipping point of "true" communism is? Because the closer one gets to communism, the worse the results. Free markets, on the other hand, work even if they aren't perfect. The more free they are, the better they work.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    On the other hand, countries with more regulated markets such as European nations, the U.K. and Commonwealth nations, and Japan and some of the East Asian Tigers might have less pollution than the United States. You get Americans importing EU baby formula because they are more restrictive about what chemical additives can go into them. Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position?
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? The trouble with calling free markets folly is they are enormously successful, in every place and time where they have been tried. The trouble with central economic planning is it always does badly. BTW, one of the functions of government in a free market is to regulate the externalities - costs of doing business that are not borne by the business. Pollution is the most obvious one of those externalities, so calling a polluting business "extreme free market" is incorrect.