Comment by agent327
2 years ago
It still beats having a central planner from the politburo tell you to work in the mines for zero compensation.
2 years ago
It still beats having a central planner from the politburo tell you to work in the mines for zero compensation.
You know that's not how central planning worked, right? You were told to live in a specific place, with a few (narrow) options on where to work at (unless you were (un)specialised, then there was sometimes zero choice), for meagre but sufficient compensation. You could have a place to live, food to eat. The place to live might be a room in an apartment shared with other families, the food to eat might be bread with bread, and there were little things you could buy outside of necessities, but you were compensated and it was near certain you would have a roof over your head, and baring drastic mismanagement/crisis, enough food.
If that's better than some having more money that they could possibly use, many having access to amazing amenities and luxuries, but a lot struggling to eat enough quality food and not being able to have a roof over their head is IMO a philosophical question. Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible" or do you prefer some to have amazing lives, but others to suffer?
The question of preference at the end is moot. Those with the power long ago made the decision that 'a few people should have a amazing lives while vast numbers of people suffer needlessly' is the way that society should be structured and structured it thusly. This is/was even true in countries with central planning as you've described above. There is/was always a select group of people at the top for whom the rules didn't apply and had all the luxuries that could desire.
You forgot the part where the central planners herded millions of people into Gulags, starved tens of millions more to death, then executed a few million more for good measure.
Other than that, spot on though.
GULAG is an acronym for a state organ, it can’t be pluralized.
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you mean like the Plains Indians in America? yeah, ugly.. they "solved war" that way.. Almost all the "great nations" of the modern times did exactly that to minority language groups, at some stage of development. Many Wrongs Do Not Make It Right -- it is what happened, however. I would add that many genocides occurred in the longer time frame of history, which is the alternative to mass forced migrations, in the eyes of the Great Powers.
> Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible" or do you prefer some to have amazing lives, but others to suffer?
This isn't the choice. Socialism (actual socialism) repeatedly starves its populations. Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time.
I.e. you can't just ignore the opportunity cost of innovation and prioritisation via a decentralised market. An innovation-focused dichotomy is: should we spend lots of effort trying to precisely spread around what we have today, while still having a privileged class based on politics, or should we encourage people to do things that raises the floor and the ceiling for everyone, and have a privileged class based on value they created?
> Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time.
> everyone's lives better
> things get cheaper and better over time.
Oh, fuck off with that bullshit. Capitalism may appear to thrive when living in a first-world country, but only does so through exploitation and cutting corners. More to the point, isn't it funny that despite capitalism being pretty much the de facto economic system of the world only a few countries are actually deemed worth living in? No, some abstract 'informed exchange of currency' didn't magically cause things to appear out of thin air. People make things, and they are almost certainly underpaid and overworked. Behind every AI model there are X poorly paid workers around the world that curated the data that it needs to function. Behind every piece of clothing there are Y poorly paid workers in Bangladesh that made it. And behind every rechargeable battery there are Z Congolese kids risking death inside a mine in search for cobalt. We might try to (and often do) look away, pretend that those are the unfortunate results of corporate blunders that seldom happen, but they're not. Invisible exploitation is what makes the kind of lifestyle that is available in first-world countries possible.
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> Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time
In theory. In practice, can you really say that existing things are getting cheaper and better, generally? Most of the Western world is seeing unprecedented price increases combined with record profits in multiple industries (so it's not just general inflation) combined with drastic quality and quantity decreases, combined with "enshitification" across multiple industries.
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>Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible"
There's the argument that in a planned economy, things can be terrible for pretty much everyone, like in Venezuela or North Korea.
You also have to account for the central planners choosing to repress people for political purposes.
Maybe you can give us a specific example of a centrally planned society which worked OK according to you? Here's a compendium of case studies to get you started: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Niemietz-Socia...
They are terrible for everyone except Maduro, his family and friends and the same about Kim Jong Un in North Korea.
I many times suspect that people who yearn for communism/socialism just wish to be those who come out on top from the revolution such as the Castros, the Chavez, Maduro, Guevara, Ortega, etc.
Ah, ye olden 'capitalism, or dystopian despair!'
Strangely one of those things that culturally, we can't get past. It's a false dichotomy at best, and completely ignores the costs of implementing capitalism.
If you take away capitalism, you are still going to need a system. The alternatives are either anarchism (and I don't fancy living in a Mad Max-style world), or some form of dictatorship: either communism, or outright dictatorship, or theocracy, or some neofeudal BS. In all of them there is a single strong man at the top who will tell you what to do, and kill you if you don't.
Capitalism at least gives you the freedom to make your own choices. All the others (except anarchism) don't.
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And by everyone you of course mean everyone that wasn't arrested because he thought maybe bread with bread and a shared appartment is kinda shitty.
*murdered
Are you serious? No one is being FORCED to suffer in the United States. Such is the beauty of our freedom.
No thanks, I’ll take the system that allows me to move up or down generally in correlation with my effort and work ethics.
> Are you serious? No one is being FORCED to suffer in the United States. Such is the beauty of our freedom.
People have multiple jobs and can't afford healthcare and are living paycheck to paycheck or don't have parental leave or paid sick leave or paid time off do that because they want to, right?
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