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The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement. Any co
by saubeidl 1y ago
The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement.
Any company with more than five employees had to be run as a worker-run coop. The board and execs were elected by the workers. Companies still competed on the market.
This would solve for the problem of alienation while still having an environment of competition.
- WalterBright 1y agoWas Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?
- layer8 1y agoDo we need economic powerhouses to live well?
- WalterBright 1y agoYes. Or would you prefer working dawn to dusk picking bugs off of your crops, with the constant spectre of crop failure and famine? Do you prefer living in a mud hut to a house with air conditioning, central heat, hot and cold running water, electric lighting and flush toilets? All courtesy of economic powerhouses. Maybe you'd prefer spending your free time spinning thread with your spinning wheel, making cloth, and sewing all your clothes? (The first industrial target was textiles.)
- layer8 1y agoI think you’re presenting a false dichotomy, but we’re not going to solve that in this thread.
- ambicapter 1y agoGP consistently has some of the worst takes on HN.
- g8oz 1y agoGOP Club For Growth drivel.
- saubeidl 1y agoDo you think that was the lifestyle in Yugoslavia? And their heyday was half a century ago at this point. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Nobody's gonna live in a mud hut using a spinning wheel just because workers run companies.
- WalterBright 1y agoWhy did 20 million people over the last 4 years sneak into America? How many Americans left for Yugoslavia?
- saubeidl 1y agoHow many Yugoslavs left for America?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- carlosjobim 1y agoWere they allowed to leave? Usually the sign of the fairest and most humane systems of government and economy is when people get shot in the back by border guards if they try to escape.
- nradov 1y agoGenerally yes. Unlike Soviet occupied Eastern Europe, most regular people in Yugoslavia were able to obtain passports and travel internationally. There were some people barred from leaving or held as political prisoners.
- saubeidl 1y agoYes. The Yugoslav passport was the strongest in the world at the time - the only one you could freely travel both West and East with.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
- ryandrake 1y agoThis is a false dichotomy: Either your country is an "economic powerhouse", or you're living in a mud hut, with nothing in between. A country can be a good, decent place to live, where people's basic needs are taken care of, with opportunities for modest life improvements for those who want them, without being an economic powerhouse (and all of the bad that comes with that).
- WalterBright 1y agoYugoslavia's economy doesn't sound so successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder... High unemployment, billions in US foreign aid, etc.
- saubeidl 1y ago> Despite facing numerous challenges, including political instability and external pressures, the Yugoslav economy achieved significant growth and modernization during its existence, with a particularly strong emphasis on education, health care, and social welfare I'm not sure we're reading the same article then. Here's some archive footage from 60's Yugoslavia for your reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXr5aKZ8mps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXr5aKZ8mps Sure doesn't look like people living in squalor in their mud huts.
- WalterBright 1y agoYou need bricks to make a house. Where are you going to get the bricks from? You need lumber to build a stick frame house. How are you going to saw the lumber? Where are you getting the steel for the saws? Where are you getting the nails from? Those all come from economic powerhouses. The steps from mud huts to modern buildings came from economic powerhouses.
- saubeidl 1y agoAll of those were made in highly industrialized Yugoslavia. Maybe they are an economic powerhouse by your definition then?
- skeaker 1y agoYou responded to a rhetorical question with the wrong answer (you can obviously live well on only modest means as arguably the majority of people do, even in the US), and then proceeded to lay out maybe the most egregious false dichotomy I've ever seen right after. I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you hold a definition of "economic powerhouse" that aligns more with "a first world country" rather than "a shareholder-maximized corporatocracy".
- trinix912 1y agoYou know Yugoslavia was heavily industrialized right? To the point they even made their own computers [1][2][3][4][5]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra_Delta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra_Delta [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskradata_1680 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskradata_1680 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ei_Ni%C5%A1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ei_Ni%C5%A1 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorenje_Dialog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorenje_Dialog [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_systems_from_Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_systems_from_...
- WalterBright 1y agoI built my own 6802 computer in those days, too. I bought the chips and parts and drew schematics and put it all together. I skipped all the hard parts, like designing the chips and building a chip fab plant. Building a computer from parts out of a catalog is commonplace.
- trinix912 1y agoThe hard parts you skipped were the entire point.
- bumby 1y agoThere seems to be a false narrative here that increased economic production will always lead to higher quality of life. I would venture to guess you only have to look into your own life to disprove that narrative. I doubt you work 20+ hours a day. You probably realize there are diminishing or outright negative returns on quality of life for trying to maximize productive output. I would say we should apply the same logic to the economy as a whole; focus production on the things that actually improve society instead of operating on the assumption that “more production is always better.”
- saubeidl 1y agoIt was a place where people lived good lives and had plenty of opportunities to succeed, along with free education and healthcare. I'm kind of tired of being an economic powerhouse where most people live in misery.
- robotnikman 1y ago>I'm kind of tired of being an economic powerhouse where most people live in misery. This. What's the point of being an economic powerhouse when most people end up living poor quality lives?
- Ray20 1y ago>people live in misery. People live in unimaginable luxury compared with what people had in Yugoslavia.
- saubeidl 1y agoAs somebody who's from there, no, they don't.
- WalterBright 1y agoWhy did you leave?
- saubeidl 1y agoBecause it was destroyed by right-wing extremists in the 90s, funded by Western capitalists that were scared it would show the world a viable alternative on how to run an economy
- nec4b 1y agoI really like what you wrote, because it demonstrates what kids in Yugoslavia were thought from a young age. There was this idea of a foreign enemy that it there to get them and any economic and political fault in the country was because of the sabotage of this invisible foreign enemy.
- lelandbatey 1y agoBeing an economic powerhouse or not isn't required for the idea to be a reasonable and workable one. But given the high levels of dysfunction/conflict that led to the breakup of the country, I doubt they'd meet whatever bar you set for "economic powerhouse".
- WalterBright 1y ago> the high levels of dysfunction/conflict Doesn't sound like Yugoslavia had a successful model.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- trinix912 1y agoThe conflict was due to it being a federation of several culturally quite different nations. When Tito died, the politicians that replaced him started heavily pushing nationalist ideologies amidst the 1980s economic crisis (which was not limited to Yugoslavia). PS. You're arguing with people who lived there. How can you be so certain you know better than those of us who saw it first hand? And I'm in no way saying it was a perfect system, btw.
- WalterBright 1y ago> You're arguing with people who lived there. You're using the past tense. Is that intended?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nec4b 1y agoIf you had lived in then you should know the standard of living was poor. More then a million people left to work in Germany as Gastarbeiters to send money home. Gas was limited. Common goods had to be brought through the border with Austria or Italy. Inflation was crazy, everybody bought German Marks the same day they got their paychecks, otherwise the money was worthless by the next day. What happened to you if you were caught as a political opposition in Yugoslavia is a story on its own.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- antisthenes 1y agoWhat % of easy carbohydrate energy was Yugoslavia consuming at the time, compared to, say, USSR or USA or China?
- nradov 1y agoAre you asking about diets? During most of the Cold War period, average people in Yugoslavia generally had more and better food than the USSR or China but less than the USA. They ate a lot of bread and potatoes. You probably won't find detailed records with percentages.
- antisthenes 1y agoNo, actual energy. Coal/Oil/Gasoline/Kerosene. What made 99% of things run in the 20th century. Things like plants, foundries and what have you.
- nradov 1y agoIn terms of fossil fuels they had significant domestic coal production but most oil and natural gas was imported.
- bumby 1y agoShould the economy serve the people or the people serve the economy?
- nec4b 1y agoThat is such a big lie. There was no worker self-management in practice. All the companies had leadership structure like most companies have today. Those leading them, were loyal members of the communist party and were politically appointed. They were the betters, the avant-garde and had access to things a normal worker couldn't dream of, like special stores which had western goods. No worker had any say how a company will work and had no share of the profits besides a paycheck.