4 ms·

I think it's important to keep in mind that people acting to support each other's healthcare without external assistance is one of those things that government

I think it's important to keep in mind that people acting to support each other's healthcare without external assistance is one of those things that government is. After all, European societies with solid health systems did not require external intervention by aliens or anything to do so. They just agreed that having such a system is a good thing, and the government happens to be a useful framework for implementing it (and keep in mind that a lot of healthcare-related stuff is actually private in Europe, depending on which country you're talking about). Overall, "government vs. markets" is a false dilemma. Markets need rules, and to a large extent, the historical evolution of governments goes hand in hand with the evolution of markets. Your pollution example fits this observation nicely. Another important point in the context of the original submission: A lot of discussion in society in this realm is confused about the centralization-decentralization and class/power structure axes. Those are largely independent, but people from all political backgrounds tend to muddle them up. [0] The pencil story is a nice illustration for why completely centralized control of the economy would be a disaster. However, it is often brought into (mostly laypeople's) political economy discussions where it really has no place, because most such discussions are not about centralization vs. decentralization. Most political economy discussions are (albeit usually in a hidden way) about class structure and power. Should there be a (necessarily tiny) class of capital owners who own and control the means of production and who, using this control, will be able to wrest for themselves a disproportionally large share of the economy's output? Or should power be distributed more evenly, along democratic lines? Ownership, control, and (de-)centralization are largely orthogonal. To give a concrete example, one could easily imagine a functioning, decentralized economy in which companies compete in the market place much like they do in the Western world today; but with the important difference that companies are (as a rule) not anybody's property, and that decisions within the company are made through a (probably representative) democratic process in which every employees has one vote. Such an economy would have vastly different distributive outcomes, but it would still be a decentralized economy that takes all the lessons of "I, Pencil" to heart. [0] This is particularly annoying when people on the left do it. At least people on the right have a motive for muddling these things up.

logicchains 13y ago
There is however a link between centralisation and distributive outcomes in the sense that the former is necessary to ensure certain forms of the latter. If for instance the democratic companies in your thought experiment were somehow structurally less competitive in the market than companies led by a single CEO (I'm not suggesting this is the case, just using it to illustrate), then in a decentralised system the CEO-led companies would outcompete the democratic ones and naturally come to dominate the market. It would hence not be possible to bring about the distributive outcomes of a market dominated by democratic companies without some centralised force capable of granting the democratic companies some advantage over the CEO-led ones. In short, if a decentralised economy necessarily leads to greater concentration of wealth/power (again, I'm not suggesting it does), then people arguing for a more even distribution of wealth/power must necessarily also argue for a more centralised economy.
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  I liked your comment, thank you. I don't quite agree though, because I get the feeling that you're not really talking about centralization of the economy, but about the centralization of power. True, enforcing a decentralized economy in which company decisions must be legitimized by employees' votes requires a centralized power. However, the same is true for almost every kind of economy that has any hope of functioning at all. For example, our non-democratic companies of today rely on workers not simply seizing the means of production for themselves. Why don't workers in, say, a car company not decide one day to shut out the owners? The most immediate explanation is that they have been conditioned by society not to do that. But it's important to keep in mind that our economy relies on the existence of a centralized power that would ultimately lock those workers up in prison if they decided to kick the owners out. It's easy to miss this fact because of status quo bias, but ultimately, it seems that every stable form of societal organization ends up relying on some form of centralization of power. This all comes to a head in your last paragraph. If the premise of that paragraph is true, then the people need not argue for a more centralised economy. They can stay with a decentralized economy, but they must argue for some action by centralized power.
  - 13y ago

logicchains 13y ago

There is however a link between centralisation and distributive outcomes in the sense that the former is necessary to ensure certain forms of the latter. If for instance the democratic companies in your thought experiment were somehow structurally less competitive in the market than companies led by a single CEO (I'm not suggesting this is the case, just using it to illustrate), then in a decentralised system the CEO-led companies would outcompete the democratic ones and naturally come to dominate the market. It would hence not be possible to bring about the distributive outcomes of a market dominated by democratic companies without some centralised force capable of granting the democratic companies some advantage over the CEO-led ones. In short, if a decentralised economy necessarily leads to greater concentration of wealth/power (again, I'm not suggesting it does), then people arguing for a more even distribution of wealth/power must necessarily also argue for a more centralised economy.

nhaehnle 13y ago
I liked your comment, thank you. I don't quite agree though, because I get the feeling that you're not really talking about centralization of the economy, but about the centralization of power. True, enforcing a decentralized economy in which company decisions must be legitimized by employees' votes requires a centralized power. However, the same is true for almost every kind of economy that has any hope of functioning at all. For example, our non-democratic companies of today rely on workers not simply seizing the means of production for themselves. Why don't workers in, say, a car company not decide one day to shut out the owners? The most immediate explanation is that they have been conditioned by society not to do that. But it's important to keep in mind that our economy relies on the existence of a centralized power that would ultimately lock those workers up in prison if they decided to kick the owners out. It's easy to miss this fact because of status quo bias, but ultimately, it seems that every stable form of societal organization ends up relying on some form of centralization of power. This all comes to a head in your last paragraph. If the premise of that paragraph is true, then the people need not argue for a more centralised economy. They can stay with a decentralized economy, but they must argue for some action by centralized power.
- 13y ago