Economic Systems

[Dominicius]

This is going to be a bit of a long post mainly about the ideas on communism and capitalism. You might want to get yourself something to drink or eat while you read. I just hope I'm not wildly in the wrong here.

Currently, the world is strongly dominated by capitalistic ideas and I think there is a reason behind it that goes beyond the whole Marxist argument where once we find the Perfect Social Policy we will be able to build the perfect society that will surpass capitalism. And while I wish this were the case, I'm going to assume that such a policy will never exist. Even if I am wrong it is still an interesting thought experiment.

I think for the most part, capitalism vs communism thread bump into the problems of motivation and efficiency. I am going to say frankly that I think that capitalism is the better economic system in those two instances. The way that capitalism works is that it takes exceptional individuals and puts resources into their hands so that they can use them more efficiently. Under capitalism you are rewarded for hard work and money can give you a lot of freedom and status in society. It is simply a great motivator to the point where many people are willing to work at jobs they hate for a paycheck.

Under communism your pay, as well as your potential for growth, is diminished. Since communism aspires for equality resources usually don't end up in the hands of those who are best equipped to use them. And unlike capitalism where even when you work in a job that you hate, there is always the potential that you will eventually move out of it, so it is even more disheartening for those with both skill and ability.

Yet despite this I still think that we should strive for a communistic society for our future.

Previously I've talked about the strengths of capitalism but there are very obvious negatives here too. Such as the accumulation of money at the very top of society, extremely hostile markets, overproduction, marketing and the impetus to sacrifice everything in the name of profit. The perfect example of the flaws of this system is an empty house near to where I live. It has been on sale for maybe a year now but nobody wants to buy it. Yet there are still homeless people out in the city, those who would benefit from having a roof under their heads. This disconnect where money creates a barrier for people to use the fruits of our collective labour is painful to watch. And this happens in every industry, with our current technology we could feed the whole world but it is far more profitable to ship unreasonable amounts of food into rich countries and then overstimulate our desire to eat so that there is a market of fat people for all this food. It is pretty much the reason why many people see globalisation as a destructive force.

The fact is, technology has advanced so far that human labour is becoming more and more obsolete. Facebook, a billion dollar company, has only a staff of around three hundred people, meaning that it becomes harder and harder for wealth to trickle down from the top. Add in the fact that we have pretty much taped all our planets resources means that when someone climbs the ladder to success people around him are improvised as he takes a bigger slice of the pie for himself, no matter how deserving he is of it.

The reason why I think we should strive for communism is because I think it is the most humane solution. If we remove money as a factor it will cause a big drop of efficiency but it will also uplift many people. I think we have finally reached a point in time where technology can actually compensate for this drop in production, especially if we can optimize our consumption on resources.

I also don't think that communism should focus on labour either. Capitalism is more efficient in this regard. But our current technology gives us another option, we can eliminate labour altogether and automate everything we can. Instead of chasing after on material gain we would need to refocus our culture. When people no longer need to work I like to imagine cities where children and their parents go to school together and school itself becomes more of a community canter where people learn how to be happy and enjoy life.

Now like I said, I do not assume that there will ever be a perfect social policy that would allow a communist society to compete with capitalism in terms of production. As such, this whole idea is impossible under conditions other than world unity as capitalism is simply much more efficient when competition exists.

[Ancient History]

I think it should be made clear that what we have - and what we have always had, more or less since our reptilian ancestors stopped laying eggs and wandering the fuck off to allow the next generation to fend for them fucking selves - is a mixed system, with both capitalist and socialist processes. No man is an island, and no human society has ever been completely without group care and welfare - though they don't always call it that, and what there is of a social safety net is not always solely on the government. There's a reason that in the absence of government care mutual aid and benefit societies arose, as did private insurance; it's the same reason why China's social policies towards smaller families is slowly dismantling thousands of years of embedded social welfare for the elderly.

[npc310]

I can't begin to disagree more.

Communism destroys the human drive for excellence. Capitalism encourages people to be better. To do better. To achieve great things. To try harder. It is rarely easy to achieve greatness. In a society where achievement isn't rewarded, there will be very little achievement, and the scale that those achievements are measured by is far lower. The middle class in Soviet Russia lived in shitty little apartments. They didn't have cars. Why would the computer technician who really understands his job, and has a great natural talent try to do great things when there is no reward for it? The guy in the cubicle next to his takes naps in the afternoon instead of working, takes 40-minute coffee and cigarette breaks. The two of them earn the same salary. What is the achiever's incentive to work harder, to go the extra mile, and make improvements? Why bother?

It is true that "the people" live a more consistent quality of life across the board, but this is not a good thing. In the 1980s, Americans in the lower income brackets still had a television. A Russian's great personal achievement or big-ticket purchase would be a radio. It was probably made in Russia, so it was a piece of crap made by factory workers who didn't care if the goods they produced worked or not. Why would they? It's not like they were going to get fired, and if they did, they'd be assigned another job in another factory assembling some other piece of crap blender, military hardware, or some other manufactured good they couldn't afford.

Capitalism does not guarantee equal outcomes, only equal opportunity. This doesn't make it unfair. I would say it is Communism that is unfair. It is not fair to the guy who is willing to work hard, never call in sick, who cares about the quality of the goods he produces, but he is compensated the same as his co-worker who leaves work early, sleeps on the job, and disregards the quality controls on the assembly line because, who cares? How is it fair that the two of them are paid the same salary, live in the same size apartment, wear the same clothes, are permitted to shop in the same stores, etc... I've hammered this point over and over again. There is no incentive to do better, so why bother?

[Ancient History]

If npc310's voice seems a little muffled, it's because he's talking out of his ass again. This is the real world, and in the real world there is no perfect capitalist or socialist society - because neither are tenable or sustainable.

Capitalism unchecked limits itself: at some point it takes less energy to form monopolies, oligarchies, and stymie up-and-comers than to compete for scarce resources or improve products. Under capitalism, being a bastard works, to the overall detriment of everyone but to the immediate profit of a few.

Socialism unchecked limits itself: not solely for lack of individual initiative, but for the crippling inability to adapt to local needs in a timely and informed manner. The production power of "communist" states is generally astounding, but the direction is generally poor and inefficient, unable to meet the needs of individual population segments - during the "Great Leap Forward," China exported grain while it's people starved.

The fact is that every nation on earth has a mix of systems - governments set the rules that allow capitalism to operate, and those restrictions are there for the benefit of both the citizens and the corporations. Local businesses are protected from foreign competition by tariffs, supported by government subsidies, compete for government contracts, buy rights and land from the government to gain access to natural resources - and that's fine, that works within reason. You screw that up and lumber companies end up buying a quarter of Liberia. You have to have the balance, because while the government cannot do everything for you, given the slightest chance capitalists will be near-sighted bastards that fuck you over for a quarter.

[Username17]

Ow. Reading through that NPC rant hurt my brain. If "Communism" was so bad for achieving great things, and "The Soviet Union" is a good example, then why did they have such high economic growth? How did they win the fucking space race? The Soviet Union had huge problems, but "failing to accomplish great things" sure as fuck was never one of them.

Now it gets super hard to have a talk about "Communism", because people don't mean consistent things by it. As Ancient History has correctly pointed out: all countries in the world (excepting only bullshit non-examples like Sealand) are Mixed Economies. Democratic Socialism has won the day after having been proved to be far and away the most powerful engine of economic growth and human welfare yet implemented on any large scale. Countries present different models for what should be privatized or nationalized, and different models for what the government should regulate and how much of the economy is in government hands. But despite the fact that all those things vary from place to place, the underlying model is basically static throughout the world. The "Third Way" people fucking won, and if anyone wants to offer a new path, they need to deal with that fact.

But let's go back to what we mean by "Communism", because people don't mean the same things when they talk to each other and use that word. Some people mean "Bureaucratic Despotism in the Soviet Model", which of course is the actual Republican playbook. Marx himself had no problem putting the word "Communist" on The Communist Manifesto, which was essentially the blueprint for modern economies all over the world. Government roads? Public education? Central banks? Abolishing child labor? It's in there.

Of course, the Communist Manifesto was written 164 years ago, so it's a bit hard to parse. I mean consider this line:

Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

You really have to translate that to modern economic jargon before you can wrap your mind around the idea that this demand is now essentially economic orthodoxy. It means that everyone should be equally treated by labor contracts and that fiscal and monetary policy should be adjusted to maintain full employment. Which gets a big "Obviously" from everyone today, but it was pretty radical when the "Communists" demanded it in 1848.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Capitalism does not guarantee equal outcomes, only equal opportunity.

I lol'd.

[DSMatticus]

Communism destroys the human drive for excellence... In a society where achievement isn't rewarded, there will be very little achievement

You have said this once before. It is factually wrong, as in it is one of the #1 misconceptions about communism in the U.S. I have corrected this myth for you once before. I gave you the facts. And now you're here repeating exactly the same shit. What the fuck, man?

Here's a quote from Marx himself:

the individual receives from society exactly what he gives to it.

Here's Lenin:

an equal amount of products for an equal amount of labour.

Equal pay/equal rewards is not actually a tenet of communism. It never has been. Marx himself wrote about how equal pay was absolutely impossible and undesirable.

Capitalism does not guarantee equal outcomes, only equal opportunity.

'Equal opportunity?' No. No it does not. Statistically speaking, the best way to get rich is to be born rich, and the best way to get poor is to be born poor. Unless you want to propose that poor people are biologically lazier, the only reasonable answer is that their environment contains less opportunity.

But hey, let's just talk about what institutions provide opportunities to poor people: public schools and government scholarships. Those are the things that let poor people get an education and move up into the middle or maybe even upper class. Those are dirty socialist programs our mixed economy society has adopted; they are not features of a capitalist society.

[K]

Lets also note that capitalism does not put resources into the hands of those who use them best and who are exceptional at using them. Mitt Romney made his money with money he inherited from his father. The Koch brothers inherited their money and company too. Donald Trump started his empire with $200 million dollars from his father back when that was big enough to start an empire.

Mittens killed as many healthy companies as unhealthy ones he saved. Trump has gone bankrupt like four times and now is a minor TV personality. The Koch brothers have only succeeded in not losing their already vast empire their father built.

Basically, for every Steve Jobs, there are a thousand trust fund babies that squat on the highest rungs of economic achievement because they inherited all the capital and started off with all the best opportunities. That's because capitalism rewards competitive advantage, not merit.

Equal opportunities is a profoundly socialist idea.

[Maxus]

...npc310, you filthy fucking socialist commie, wanting to destroy capitalism so your Marxist overlords can crush the United States you hate so much.

[Ted the Flayer]

I find the idea that no matter how hard I work or how many degrees I add to the stack the rich fucks will hold on to all the money to make me not want to work hard. Why work to make someone else rich?

[The Vigilante]

I find it funny that free market fundamentalists get angry when communists claim that "real communism" never got implemented, but inevitably resort to that same excuse about capitalism when someone points out that equality of opportunity is a myth.

[Cynic]

I find it funny that people actually believe that "real communism" or "real capitalism" can be done.

[Mistborn]

From everything I've learned, it seems Marx was completely right about what was wrong with capitalism, mostly right on what policies where needed to fix what was wrong, but dead wrong on how to actually put his ideas into place.

Would that be a fair summation?

[Dominicius]

Honestly I think that Keyns was probobly the guy with the right idea under the current conditions. The goverment steps in only as much as is needed to equate the playing field but otherwise allows people to seek their fortunes on their own.

Mostly to avoid the whole Production/Consumtion imbalance we see now but it is also a more humane solution than complete economic anarchy.

[Username17]

Honestly I think that Keyns was probobly the guy with the right idea under the current conditions. The goverment steps in only as much as is needed to equate the playing field but otherwise allows people to seek their fortunes on their own.

Mostly to avoid the whole Production/Consumtion imbalance we see now but it is also a more humane solution than complete economic anarchy.

Keynes had several ideas that are completely correct. His ideas of using fiscal and monetary policy to keep the economy from collapsing in the ways that Marx described do in fact work. His ideas are however incomplete, and can be attacked quite successfully from both the Right and the Left. The Rightwing attack is (well, used to be, before the Right abandoned intellectualism as a going concern) that Keynesian monetary policy is dependent on the central bank having control over inflation - which even with fiat money it does not have in certain circumstances (Stagflation and Liquidity Trap conditions), and in those circumstances a more iron fisted approach is not only helpful, it is required.

The criticism from the Left is less numeric, but nonetheless true. It is that despite the fact that Keynesianism would suggest that it is perfectly fine to operate in an economy where the government's share of the economy was just barely large enough that by pulling back completely they could leave room for the maximum expectable private sector boom (about 8-10% of GDP), the reality is that places like that are super shitty because there are vast sections of the economy whose normal operations result in complete market failure for one reason or another, and things are simply better when the government controls (or is at least heavily invested in) those sectors. Healthcare, water, transportation, education, and defense are all extremely dubious when the government is not extremely involved.

---

From everything I've learned, it seems Marx was completely right about what was wrong with capitalism, mostly right on what policies where needed to fix what was wrong, but dead wrong on how to actually put his ideas into place.

Would that be a fair summation?

Marx's "ideas put into practice" come in two stages, which for convenience we will call "Socialism & Communism". Although to make things harder to talk about, the actual Communist Manifesto is talking about putting the first into practice. Go figure.

Marx's ideas on how to put Socialism into practice appear to be broadly correct. Pretty much every country in the First World has basically adopted his playbook and literally every country in the world practices one form or another of Socialism. To refresh your memory, here is Marx's Socialist ideas into practice playbook from The Manifesto:

• Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

Hard though it may be to even understand, it used to be that rights of property allowed landowners to have their own rule of law on their estates and they had the expectation that they didn't have to pay property taxes. Only people in the cities, who had limited ownership of state-owned land had to abide by laws or pay taxes on their homes. Now of course, the second system is defacto assumed for everyone everywhere.

• A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Remember that before 1913, Income Tax was against the constitution in the US. Income Tax is totally normalized in the entire western world, but it's less than a century old.

• Abolition of all right of inheritance.

Remember Estate Taxes? Not all countries have it, but its very existence has changed inheritance of wealth from a "right" to a "privilege".

• Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

This is one of the weirder ones on there - it refers to moves by the state against rogue French monarchist nobles. Since French monarchist nobles do not wield international political power today, this can pretty much get stamped "Done". But I suppose that if the Seasteding people succeed in their dreams of making Rapture, Marx would argue that it is the responsibility of the State to crush them.

• Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Every country in the world has abandoned the Gold Standard and now runs on Fiat Money issued by Central Banks. Done.

• Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

Post offices, Communications Commissions, and National Highways. Done.

• Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

This is an extremely 19th century way of advocating the government investing in infrastructure and having land use plans and shit. There are basically no countries left that don't accept the logic of this.

• Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

This means "equal application of labor and contract law to all people" and "modify government spending and monetary policy to target low unemployment".

• Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

Probably Marx's shittiest idea: he was totally in favor of Suburbs, although those turn out to have a host of problems. Of course, his advocacy of the mechanization of agriculture was way ahead of its time and the results have been pretty positive.

• Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.

Public education, abolishment of child labor, and the conversion of the lower classes into literate ones. This is probably the best idea on here, and modern society pretty much could not function without it.

So basically, he advocated doing most of the things that converted Victorian society into Modern Society and he thought that doing so would create systems that were much like Scandinavian social democracies. So ironically, Marx was basically right about and it is The West that has done what he said they should and ended up where he said they would by doing so. The United States is a very Marxist country, with its Department of Education, and its Department of Transportation, and its Federal Reserve.

The thing where Marx goes off the rails a bit is the part where he theorized on where we'd go from there (or rather, from here, since we're living in it right now). He thought that by being democracies with central banking, public education, and national highways that connected suburbs together into powerful Nation States that we'd gradually weaken central authorities and the State would fade away into a stateless direct democracy, and we would achieve Communist Utopia that way. That part seems basically insane. While I think that in general we have made things more transparent and more democratic, I don't believe that The State has gotten any weaker or that it ultimately ever will.

Marx's idea of a Communist Utopia with little or no power invested in the central authority of the State is balderdash. I do not understand how he thought that was going to work. It's not just him though, Anarchosyndicalists are totally a thing, and they argue along much the same line even to this day. I just happen to think that they are completely wrong.

-Username17

[Sashi]

The thing where Marx goes off the rails a bit is the part where he theorized on where we'd go from there (or rather, from here, since we're living in it right now). He thought that by being democracies with central banking, public education, and national highways that connected suburbs together into powerful Nation States that we'd gradually weaken central authorities and the State would fade away into a stateless direct democracy, and we would achieve Communist Utopia that way. That part seems basically insane. While I think that in general we have made things more transparent and more democratic, I don't believe that The State has gotten any weaker or that it ultimately ever will.

And this is the part that the "Communist" countries basically went insane with, correct? Basically trying to go through the Communist Manifesto backwards and upside down.

[sabs]

No, the part where the Communist countries went insane was that they were actually Dictatorships with a hatred for the intellectual class.
Every SINGLE Communist Country spent 15-40 years murdering teachers and professors, and then went, oh shit.. we actually need educated people to compete.. lets rebuild the intellectual class.

[Starmaker]

Every SINGLE Communist Country spent 15-40 years murdering teachers and professors, and then went, oh shit.. we actually need educated people to compete.. lets rebuild the intellectual class.

wut
edit for clarity:

[sabs]

Yes, the attacks on the Intellectuals in Soviet Russia happened in the 20's and 30's. Stalin killed some 7 million Ukranians, including about 80% of their intellectual class. Just because in the 50's, after they saw what scientists could do for the war effort, they changed their tune does not change what happened.

I mean, you could pull up China today and talk about how they revere their Scientists and Intellectuals (though it's a double edge.. they only like the pro-Communist party ones) But that doesn't change the fact that in the 1950's they basically murdered anyone who was 'westernized' including pretty much every professor they had.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I mean, you could pull up China today and talk about how they revere their Scientists and Intellectuals (though it's a double edge.. they only like the pro-Communist party ones) But that doesn't change the fact that in the 1950's they basically murdered anyone who was 'westernized' including pretty much every professor they had.

A lot of them were just sent to work/reeducation camps. I know at least a few eventually escaped and ended up working at American universities.

[Starmaker]

Yes, the attacks on the Intellectuals in Soviet Russia happened in the 20's and 30's.

Who exactly was killed? How? By whom? On what charges?

Stalin killed some 7 million Ukranians, including about 80% of their intellectual class.

How? When? Who signed the orders? Where are the remains? I also kindly ask you to not post pics of the 20s' post-revolution hunger and the Armenian genocide. in fact, every source that can't tell the 20s from the 30s is right out.

Just because in the 50's, after they saw what scientists could do for the war effort

Zombie scientists?

[sabs]

Starmaker, the Russian Gulags actually did happen.
And most of the scientists in the 50's are Nazi scientists. That's the old joke on why the US won the space war. Our Nazi Scientists were better than theirs.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Starmaker, the Russian Gulags actually did happen.
And most of the scientists in the 50's are Nazi scientists. That's the old joke on why the US won the space war. Our Nazi Scientists were better than theirs.

It would be more accurate to say 'The US had Nazi scientists and the CCCP had Soviet scientists. Your scientists got you into space first, but we caught up pretty quick'. The Russians were a lot less forgiving of Germany.

[sabs]

During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge severely damaged its progress. Many leading engineers were killed, and Korolyov and others were imprisoned in the Gulag.[8]:10-14 Although the Katyusha was very effective on the Eastern Front during World War II, the advanced state of the German rocket program amazed Russian engineers who inspected its remains at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk after the end of the war in Europe. Although the Americans had secretly moved most leading German scientists and 100 V-2 rockets to the United States in Operation Paperclip the Russian program greatly benefited from captured German records and scientists, in particular drawings obtained from the V-2 production sites.[8]:20,25,27,29-31,56 Under the direction of Dimitri Ustinov, Korolyov and others inspected the drawings. Helped by rocket scientist Helmut Gröttrup and other captured Germans until the early 1950s,[8]:30,80-82 they built a replica of the V-2 called the R-1, although the weight of Soviet nuclear warheads required a more powerful booster. Korolyov's OKB-1 design bureau was dedicated to the liquid-fueled cryogenic rockets he had been experimenting with in the late 1930s. Ultimately, this work resulted in the design of the R-7 Semyorka[11] intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which was successfully tested in August 1957.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#Intelligentsia

[Username17]

Starmaker, the Russian Gulags actually did happen.
And most of the scientists in the 50's are Nazi scientists. That's the old joke on why the US won the space war. Our Nazi Scientists were better than theirs.

This is totally nonsequetorial. Gulags were real (well, "the Gulag" was a building in Moscow, but I know what you meant), but they weren't a 20 year attack on intellectualism. Nazi scientists certainly happened, but not much in the Soviet Union. Also, they won the space race, not us. And the scientists who actually put their rockets into space were mostly home grown.

You're just full of shit here.

The biggest Gulag and Science problem was the part where the Soviet Union decided that Darwinian Biology was counter revolutionary. Biologists were sent to reeducation camps in Siberia. But not seven million of them, and not because they were intellectuals. It was because the actual answers they were coming out with were things that the Soviet Union could not incorporate into their narrative. They sponsored non-Darwinian concepts that didn't make any sense and provoked some serious crop shortfalls. That's a real thing, but your description of it is simply completely wrong beginning to end.

-Username17