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It never ceases to amaze me how often people will make socialist economic arguments (that are objectively correct) yet eschew the label "socialism". An enterpr

by jmyeet 2y ago

It never ceases to amaze me how often people will make socialist economic arguments (that are objectively correct) yet eschew the label "socialism". An enterprise, like providing a utility, has revenues and it has costs. The difference between the two can be called the "surplus labor value". What happens to that depends on the economic system. In capitalism, capital owners own that enterprise (utility) and they siphon off profits raising the costs. Put another way, capital owners own the means of production, not the residents of the city or the city itself. This is rent-seeking behavior. In a socialist organization of the economy, the residents either directly or through the city itself, would own the utility. Any profits would go back into the utility or be extra revenue for the city but there's really no incentive to increase prices on the citizens who own the utility (unlike the unquenchable thirst for increasing profits for capital owners). I have to constantly point out that capitalism isn't markets (market existed thousands of years before it and exist in every economic system). Capitalism simply supplanted feudalism by replacing kings with billionaires. That's it. We have abundant examples of how the latter is a substantially better system. Just compare EPB Internet (Chattanooga, TN and surrounds) vs Verizon, AT&T, Comcast or Spectrum. Municipal broadband, without exception, is substantially better than any national ISP. The only thing that keeps national ISPs in business is more rent-seeking behavior such as lobbying for legislation to ban municipal broadband. Given this is the Superbowl weekend, it's worth adding that the Packers are owned by Green Bay (an arrangement the NFL now bans for any other franchise). What do we see in other cities? Teams extorating massive tax breaks from cities, counties and states to build massive stadiums at taxpayer expense without the team having to give up anything. The KC Chiefs are rumbling about leaving because the city didn't pass a sales tax increase to pay for upgrades to Arrowhead Stadium. I don't know why anyone is surprised by any of this anymore.

mmooss 2y ago
Do you think public ownership would have yielded the development of modern IT, for example?
- jmyeet 2y ago
  The Internet was quite literally a government invention. Google was invented at Stanford. Linux was created by a volunteer who organized on Usenet.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Sure, but most of the innovation was in private companies and in open source projects (which I should have included in the first place). > Usenet That is FOSS and P2P collaberative (at least on the server level). Is that somehow connected with government?
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Something akin to it very likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel is one example of early IT done by government owned enterprise.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Minitel is just one project, a successful one but eclipsed by the rest of the IT world. Does that mean the French government could have done what SV did? Why didn't they?
    - throwaway4220 2y ago
      I was about to argue against you, but here is some nuance from a bbc article about minitel: It was the whole model that was doomed. Basically to set up a service on Minitel, you had to ask permission from France Telecom. You had to go to the old guys who ran the system, and who knew absolutely nothing about innovation. "It meant that nothing new could ever happen. Basically, Minitel innovated from 1978 to 1982, and then it stopped," he says. But others are less critical. Valerie Schafer, Thierry's co-author, says "the way Minitel is now fobbed off as risible and old-fashioned" is unfair. "People forget that many of the ideas that helped form the internet were first of all tried out on Minitel. Think of the payment system, not so different from the Apple app-store. "Think of the forums, the user-generated content. Many of today's web entrepreneurs and thinkers cut their teeth on Minitel," she says. "The world did not begin with the internet."

by jmyeet 2y ago

mmooss 2y ago

Do you think public ownership would have yielded the development of modern IT, for example?

jmyeet 2y ago
The Internet was quite literally a government invention. Google was invented at Stanford. Linux was created by a volunteer who organized on Usenet.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Sure, but most of the innovation was in private companies and in open source projects (which I should have included in the first place). > Usenet That is FOSS and P2P collaberative (at least on the server level). Is that somehow connected with government?
Ekaros 2y ago
Something akin to it very likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel is one example of early IT done by government owned enterprise.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Minitel is just one project, a successful one but eclipsed by the rest of the IT world. Does that mean the French government could have done what SV did? Why didn't they?
  - throwaway4220 2y ago
    I was about to argue against you, but here is some nuance from a bbc article about minitel: It was the whole model that was doomed. Basically to set up a service on Minitel, you had to ask permission from France Telecom. You had to go to the old guys who ran the system, and who knew absolutely nothing about innovation. "It meant that nothing new could ever happen. Basically, Minitel innovated from 1978 to 1982, and then it stopped," he says. But others are less critical. Valerie Schafer, Thierry's co-author, says "the way Minitel is now fobbed off as risible and old-fashioned" is unfair. "People forget that many of the ideas that helped form the internet were first of all tried out on Minitel. Think of the payment system, not so different from the Apple app-store. "Think of the forums, the user-generated content. Many of today's web entrepreneurs and thinkers cut their teeth on Minitel," she says. "The world did not begin with the internet."