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> Socialism's track record is pretty bad However the track record for developed countries communally sharing "intellectual property" is much much better. Unive

by robocat 2mo ago

> Socialism's track record is pretty bad However the track record for developed countries communally sharing "intellectual property" is much much better. Universities, open source, and public domain all have some crossover with the ideals of socialism. Yes, communism has repeatedly failed spectacularly. The softer socialism of public welfare has worked (so far) for many countries including the US. Although I'm skeptical about the future given modern demographics and our governments' choices to appease a majority. The governments of most developed countries smell socialist to me. I'm from New Zealand and most private income/property is taxed up the wahoo to pay for our social welfare programs: it doesn't take much squinting to see my own society as broadly socialist. Somehow I see people in the US complaining that the Chinese are beating the US at capitalism (regular complaints of price undercutting and monopolistic behaviours) - what's weird since the Chinese are supposed to be pinkos.

WalterBright 2mo ago
The Chinese switched from communism to free markets. Prosperity resulted.
- anthk 2mo ago
  Hybrid system, actually. No 100% pure system survived, ever. Be capitalist, communist, or technology philosophy bound. The GNU project tried to expand Unix with ITS editors (Emacs), utilities, ITS'like freedom and Lisp (Emacs and Scheme, again). For a while the most used editor for Unixen wasn't vi or a vi descendant (vim), but Emacs, an editor alien to Unix. Knowing Vi was almost something 'mandatory' in order to manage servers' configuration under any Unix like OS, and ed on hard emergencies where even the terminal wasn't reliable enough. Windows needs WSL2 and POSIX compat to be relevant today. Win32 itself doesn't run on top of a DOS like VM having almost a 95% of control of the machine, but on a VMS'like kernel with objects a la IBM. MacOS itself it's just a Macintosh like UI made from NeXTStep scraps, a Mach kernel and pieces from a FreeBSD useland.
- close04 2mo ago
  > switched from communism to free markets Free markets are a component of capitalism just as they are a component of market socialism. China is a planned economy which stands in contrast to a market economy. But China has taken bits and pieces from many systems to create something that works for them, a hybrid that's probably specific to China alone. It's just capitalist enough to be able to interface with big wallets around the world, but we can all agree China itself is very far from being free market capitalism.
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    Compare China today with China of the Cultural Revolution.
WalterBright 2mo ago
I'm not a particular fan of intellectual property. It's a made-up form of property, and seems to be more of an impediment to progress than a help. I'm not joking - the D language is as open source as possible. We give it away for free.
PowerElectronix 2mo ago
As I see it, fully voluntary socislism where people share and cooperate because they just feel like it, works exceedingly well. It also naturally regulates itself as people will just abandon stuff that looks iffy and work extra on stuff that is well run, fair, etc When you force people to pitch, share, cooperate, etc, things start to don't work out so well and you start getting people that takes advantage of a system that mandates others to work for a cause no matter what, as well as people that will do whatever they can to not do their work.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  Free markets are based on voluntary cooperation. Socialism is coercive cooperation.
  - robocat 2mo ago
    Ideal socialism is voluntary, just like ideal free markets. I wonder whether your axiomatic belief is that we should all have freedom? Therefore you love the idea of free markets? I wonder if some of your "free market" comments would be better written in terms of freedom rather than economics. Game theory and evolutionary stable strategies show the issues of cooperation versus defection. Voluntary cooperation fails because power is required to enforce fairness/contracts and then the powerful can defect. That is independent of socialism or free markets. Also authoritarianism and socialism are different things, even if history shows correlation. Socialism is a deeply tarred word, with radical differences in meaning (approximately equal to communism for many, or democracy for others). If authoritarianism is a stable outcome, then it can be an outcome of free markets too. Re your other thread: calling China a free market seems extremely odd, and basing any argument on that 'fact' is even odder. Edit: perhaps "Socialism is coercive cooperation" is similarly nonsensical.
    - WalterBright 2mo ago
      > Ideal socialism is voluntary There have been 20,000+ voluntary socialist communes set up in the US. They all failed. Socialism requires forcible coercion.

by robocat 2mo ago

WalterBright 2mo ago

The Chinese switched from communism to free markets. Prosperity resulted.

anthk 2mo ago
Hybrid system, actually. No 100% pure system survived, ever. Be capitalist, communist, or technology philosophy bound. The GNU project tried to expand Unix with ITS editors (Emacs), utilities, ITS'like freedom and Lisp (Emacs and Scheme, again). For a while the most used editor for Unixen wasn't vi or a vi descendant (vim), but Emacs, an editor alien to Unix. Knowing Vi was almost something 'mandatory' in order to manage servers' configuration under any Unix like OS, and ed on hard emergencies where even the terminal wasn't reliable enough. Windows needs WSL2 and POSIX compat to be relevant today. Win32 itself doesn't run on top of a DOS like VM having almost a 95% of control of the machine, but on a VMS'like kernel with objects a la IBM. MacOS itself it's just a Macintosh like UI made from NeXTStep scraps, a Mach kernel and pieces from a FreeBSD useland.
close04 2mo ago
> switched from communism to free markets Free markets are a component of capitalism just as they are a component of market socialism. China is a planned economy which stands in contrast to a market economy. But China has taken bits and pieces from many systems to create something that works for them, a hybrid that's probably specific to China alone. It's just capitalist enough to be able to interface with big wallets around the world, but we can all agree China itself is very far from being free market capitalism.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  Compare China today with China of the Cultural Revolution.

WalterBright 2mo ago

I'm not a particular fan of intellectual property. It's a made-up form of property, and seems to be more of an impediment to progress than a help. I'm not joking - the D language is as open source as possible. We give it away for free.

PowerElectronix 2mo ago

As I see it, fully voluntary socislism where people share and cooperate because they just feel like it, works exceedingly well. It also naturally regulates itself as people will just abandon stuff that looks iffy and work extra on stuff that is well run, fair, etc When you force people to pitch, share, cooperate, etc, things start to don't work out so well and you start getting people that takes advantage of a system that mandates others to work for a cause no matter what, as well as people that will do whatever they can to not do their work.

WalterBright 2mo ago
Free markets are based on voluntary cooperation. Socialism is coercive cooperation.
- robocat 2mo ago
  Ideal socialism is voluntary, just like ideal free markets. I wonder whether your axiomatic belief is that we should all have freedom? Therefore you love the idea of free markets? I wonder if some of your "free market" comments would be better written in terms of freedom rather than economics. Game theory and evolutionary stable strategies show the issues of cooperation versus defection. Voluntary cooperation fails because power is required to enforce fairness/contracts and then the powerful can defect. That is independent of socialism or free markets. Also authoritarianism and socialism are different things, even if history shows correlation. Socialism is a deeply tarred word, with radical differences in meaning (approximately equal to communism for many, or democracy for others). If authoritarianism is a stable outcome, then it can be an outcome of free markets too. Re your other thread: calling China a free market seems extremely odd, and basing any argument on that 'fact' is even odder. Edit: perhaps "Socialism is coercive cooperation" is similarly nonsensical.
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    > Ideal socialism is voluntary There have been 20,000+ voluntary socialist communes set up in the US. They all failed. Socialism requires forcible coercion.