Night of the Living ComCap Debate....

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
OMG,

You believe the revolution will come (as far fetched as that may be) yet the safety net won't.

Good thing your not setting the lines at Vegas.

The safety net won't save capitalism. I agree it will be tried.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Where were you earlier. That was the third thread.

I was busy. Very busy. And I've learned from experience to avoid threads containing any of Vels posts unless I have an awful lot of time on my hands.
[OT: PS: Vel, how does "Lands of Lorraine II : Alsace Beware!" sound? ]

The fundamental point, I feel, is that all people are not equal - and I am using the mathematical definition of equality here. All should certainly be considered equal in the eyes of the law, and in their inate human and civil rights (from which the social concept of equality stems) certainly, but they are not equal. Even adjacent computers on an assembly line, with identical components, hardware, software etc, are not equal and will not perform equally, not even from one operation to the next (believe me I know about this right now. Grrr! ). Humans are near-infinitely more complex.

I think it was a Heinlein novel that postulated a future in which a communist society tried to make all people "equal". It was beyond the ability of human science to elevate those less-intelligent, less imaginative or less physically able to the status of those who were, hence the only way to bring about a semblance of equality was to physically/mentally disable or inhibit those above the norm.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by ravagon
I was busy. Very busy. And I've learned from experience to avoid threads containing any of Vels posts unless I have an awful lot of time on my hands.
[OT: PS: Vel, how does "Lands of Lorraine II : Alsace Beware!" sound? ]

The fundamental point, I feel, is that all people are not equal - and I am using the mathematical definition of equality here. All should certainly be considered equal in the eyes of the law, and in their inate human and civil rights (from which the social concept of equality stems) certainly, but they are not equal. Even adjacent computers on an assembly line, with identical components, hardware, software etc, are not equal and will not perform equally, not even from one operation to the next (believe me I know about this right now. Grrr! ). Humans are near-infinitely more complex.

I think it was a Heinlein novel that postulated a future in which a communist society tried to make all people "equal". It was beyond the ability of human science to elevate those less-intelligent, less imaginative or less physically able to the status of those who were, hence the only way to bring about a semblance of equality was to physically/mentally disable or inhibit those above the norm.

Nope, for good or bad, we aren't equal. I'm not really sure, but I don't think anyone here at poly is arguing that we are equal. The left is just arguing that people should recieve equal benefits or at least something closer to equal.

[ravagon]

But equal benefits for what? Equal work when people aren't equal, hence aren't capable of producing equal work? Should all people have an innate right to a "better" job (more comfortable, shorter hours ... interpret this as you wish) regardless of their ability to actually do it?

Should people receive the same reward for "unequal" work (and try as you mght you'll never be able to convince somebody who spends 10 hours a day sweeping the Moscow streets clear of snow in winter that he has the same work/reward as somebody who rakes leaves in Hawaii)?

Jobs are not equal, however you break them up, unless you try and rotate everybody through every job or somesuch, which just brings you back to tremendous inefficiency.
Who decides upon who becomes a scientist or an engineer? Those talented in such methods or those who aren't, in the interests of "equality"?
How would you feel if you had the imagination/innate talent for something greater but were assigned to something mediocre? Content with your lot in life? What if a new program failed, with casualties, simply because there was someone assigned to a job who wasn't capable of such a task? Would one be content with the knowledge that society was served as a whole if ones loved ones were some of those casualties?

One has to differentiate between people to decide who does what. To do this means ranking people from highest to lowest in order to decide their suitability for a task. ie: It means making use of inequalities.
Capitalism does this inherrently. At a cost of the inequality between jobs/people/lifestyle.
Who does this for communism, how and what is the cost?

Equal means equal means equal.

The true measure of a society should be the well-being and contentment of those therein.

[mrmitchell]

Vel, do they pay you to do this in some study or something?

Communism can't work on a large scale. There's not enough honest people.

[Velociryx]

definitely not doing it for pay, tho if I could find a way to make it pay....

Here's something I posted late last night in GePap's thread. I'll copy it here and add to it as I am able to during the course of the day:

Odin's comments I was replying to:
Just look at a hunter-gatherer society, humans are naturally communal. Our australopithicine ancestors lived in a hiearchial society, like modern chimps, when our brains became large enough (Homo habilis) we could decieve each other, creating the more eligaterian culture in modern hunter-gatherers.

After the invention of agriculture people could become exploited, they could be ripped off in bartaring, over-taxed by a corrupt ruler, or forced into slavery by invaders.
***

I disagree, Odin.

Not with the fact that humans were once living in small (communally oriented) hunter-gatherer tribes--we know, in fact, that they did--but we've moved beyond that.

That worked because our communal groups were very small and the scattered tribes were essentially an extended family.

Trouble is, as humans began increasing in number, and the little scattered tribes began competing with each other for living space, they began uniting into progressively larger tribes (at first for mutual protection, and then for other reasons....there's efficiencies to being big) and the communal system fell apart.

It's just not scalable beyond very limited numbers. It's okay when everybody knows everybody (as was the case in our communal tribe, ancient past), but it simply cannot cope with the size issue.

In a very small tribe (group) everybody HAS TO work together to ensure survival. Skill-based specialization occurs, with each tribal member working on a specific task, and contributing his efforts to the whole, and that's okay, cos you know and trust everyone in your little tribe (and even here, on this small scale, there are tensions because although you are working for "the group" there's still the undercurrent of "me first" which leads to the leader of the group being continually tested by other alpha males who want the top spot).

Try turning NYC into a commune. Never happen. Too many people. They don't know each other....CAN'T know each other....there's just too many people.

Today, we have cities that are of sizes to boggle the mind. Bigger than anything our ancestors could have DREAMED, they're so huge. It's something fairly recent in our history, and something we've never dealt with before.

We dealt with it, IMO, by each becoming chief of our own little tribe (a tribe of one, or of the immediate family) and by continuing the process of an "informal" tribal association--most folks don't know or associate with more than ~100 or so individuals, including family, thus creating hundreds, if not thousands of little "tribes" inside our big cities, whose lines cross and tangle with each other in complex ways as friendships and bonds are created and destroyed.

In this chaos, it is impossible to have a communal society. The group memberships are too transient, too informal to support it, and the aggregate population is too large to impose a commune-like system over the top of it.

Just a bleary-eyed thought on the way to bed.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Competition for resources has existed since before man was even in the picture. One look into the world around us and we see that same pattern everywhere. Animals compete for mating rights with (the limited resources of) females. Tribes of baboons compete for living space, wild dogs who bring down a large animal compete to see who gets to eat first over the body of the kill….everywhere.

It’s nothing new to the world, nor is it even uniquely human, and it certainly is not the “fault” of capitalism (unless those folks who argue that position would argue that monkeys and dogs are capitalist pigdogs too).

Capitalism is warfare. Stylized, symbolic warfare that simulates the war over resources. Rather than killing each other over a thing, we compete for it in the market place, abstracting the “war” to preserve life and limb (much less stressful on society as a whole, and much less bloody). Know what the best selling business book of all time is? It’s not “Who Moved My Cheese,” and it’s not “The One Minute Manager.”

The Art of War, Sun Tzu

And that is very telling.

So what happens if you tear down the method of symbolic warfare?

Old-style warfare returns with a vengeance. Blood.

If not for the weekly dole, then for anything else human beings compete over. The affection and attention of another, to instill fear, to assert mastery or control, or good old fashioned dominance.

You can’t “legislate out” human nature, and pretending it does not exist will result in the dismal failure of whatever social experiment you are conducting.

The choices are to either let people be people, or fight the losing battle of attempting to prevent the same.

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by ravagon
But equal benefits for what? Equal work when people aren't equal, hence aren't capable of producing equal work? Should all people have an innate right to a "better" job (more comfortable, shorter hours ... interpret this as you wish) regardless of their ability to actually do it?

Should people receive the same reward for "unequal" work (and try as you mght you'll never be able to convince somebody who spends 10 hours a day sweeping the Moscow streets clear of snow in winter that he has the same work/reward as somebody who rakes leaves in Hawaii)?

Jobs are not equal, however you break them up, unless you try and rotate everybody through every job or somesuch, which just brings you back to tremendous inefficiency.
Who decides upon who becomes a scientist or an engineer? Those talented in such methods or those who aren't, in the interests of "equality"?
How would you feel if you had the imagination/innate talent for something greater but were assigned to something mediocre? Content with your lot in life? What if a new program failed, with casualties, simply because there was someone assigned to a job who wasn't capable of such a task? Would one be content with the knowledge that society was served as a whole if ones loved ones were some of those casualties?

One has to differentiate between people to decide who does what. To do this means ranking people from highest to lowest in order to decide their suitability for a task. ie: It means making use of inequalities.
Capitalism does this inherrently. At a cost of the inequality between jobs/people/lifestyle.
Who does this for communism, how and what is the cost?

Equal means equal means equal.

The true measure of a society should be the well-being and contentment of those therein.

The old economy where you didn't even need a college education to get a good job is disapearing. The new economy is taking place where you have to have a specific knowledge to get a well paying job. Manual labor really has little to do with your earing power. There are two things about the new economy.

One, there isn't enough jobs for everyone, because the new jobs are so productive. Two, as you say, not everyone has equal capability to do the new jobs. That changes everything, because capitalism can no longer be justified by the protestant work ethic. There are many people who want to work hard, but there are no jobs for them, because they flunked physics in college. And even if they did pass physics they just aren't as physics smart as the person who got the job.

So without the protestant work ethic, which we've already seen breaking down with welfare and other programs capitalism faces a crisis. Even with govt programs people are suffering from poverty, and poverty of course causes all kinds of bad things. If capitalism were to survive and improve itself so that it could provide for humanity the protestat work ethic would have to be thrown out, and people like you would have to drop their objection for people to get paid more than their market worth.

[Kidlicious]

Vel,

I'll read your posts later. I have to go and see about getting exploited by the pigdogs.

[Velociryx]

The flaw in the logic there is as follows:

The economy is not of a "set size." There is not some magical "aggregate productivity" number that the economy cannot surpass, and yet, your theory assumes that there is.

One, there isn't enough jobs for everyone, because the new jobs are so productive.

This is not the way the economy works. You are looking at one half of the job loss/creation equation without acknowledging the other.

Yes, *sometimes* when a company acquires new technology to make their workers more productive, the result is that they shave off a few workers from their work force.

Other times, the use the same number of workers (or add a few new ones) to use the more productive methods to increase their market share. (Same people, more productivity = more stuff & more stuff made and sold = more market share).

Barring that, the people released from their job at company X could go to work for company Y and increase their market share.

The point, however, is that there is no natural limit, no aggregate productivity threshold that the economy cannot cross, nor is it categorically the case that an increase in productivity equals a reduction in workforce. To borrow your own phrase, oftentimes, that simply would not be "rational."

-=Vel=-

PS to Rav: Sorry bud! I can....ummm....ramble on now and again, can't I? Ahhh, and good title for the AAR! Now I'm torn between that one and The Lands of Lorraine II - When Dukes Attack!

[Velociryx]

and people like you would have to drop their objection for people to get paid more than their market worth.

Here's the other problem I have.

Why?

Capitalism makes no pretense of being the determinant of your sum total value as a human being. It is merely an expression of the value of your skills on the open market.

That people can confuse the two (total self worth vs. value of their skills) is not the fault of capitalism.

I'm a heckuva nice guy, but I do not see why the economic system in place should pay me for that.

So long as the safety net is in place to ensure those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder have the basics covered (--ie, the bottom rung should not be a wretched place to be, where your choices are misery and hunger, but yes....capitalism demands that there be a top and a bottom, and its mechanisms provide the incentive to compete your way upwards), why SHOULD human beings get a stipend for simply existing? I strongly disagree with this argument.

When people ask me "Chris, what do you do?" My answer is not "I work on a helpdesk for a bank." That's my job. That's how I make the money required to eat.

I AM an artist. An author. That's what defines me. Not the job.

And I can do both. I work my job to provide the economic support structure to be able to do what I love. What I don't expect is for people to pay me just because I love writing.

The books are out there in the market. If they're good, if they're what the market wants, and if I advertise and market well, people will buy them. Given my marketing efforts to date--not much--they're doing better than I have any reason to expect (but I'm keeping my day job).

-=Vel=-

[Meldor]

I am sorry I missed the earlier debates. Forgive me if I go over anything that was previously covered. I will sort of ramble to get started so forgive again.

It is hard to say were to start. In order for communism to work you would have to have "perfect" humans. That was the reason for the "re-eduction" that was to take place. Humans, as we are made now, want to strive for something. We want to compete. The communist system leaves us nothing to strive for, nothing in which to compete. In order to compete we have to have something to measure it by, either material or social. The capitalist system gives us both, the better we do the more material things we aquire and the better our social standing. In a communist system, we all have an equal share of the material and there is no social standing, as one job is as important as another. This make the system stagnate. Thier is no drive to succede. Yes, there are some people who dedicate their lives to making things better for others, but these people can not support the world by themselves.

Let us take a real world example. Farming in the USSR vs. farmer in the USA. Under the communist system, the farmer was told what to plant, when to plant it, how much to plant, what and how much pesticide to use, when to use it, etc. The farmers reward for getting in a bumper crop was the absolute same as if the crop yield was poor. There were no incentives for the farmer to adopt any improved method and any that were shoved down his throat were merely mimed at until the government turned its head. What this resulted in was a massive loss of domestic production, blamed on everything but the system of course and the embarrassment of having to purchase grain from outside sources, the US in particlular.

Let's see how things worked in the US in that same period. The continued consolidation of the farms into larger and more cost effective models was combined with an increase in the productivity of the average farm worker due to a large upswing in equipment, technology (such as better strains of corps), and combined resources. It is interesting that American farmeing is one place in which the co-op model has been proven to be a boon to capitalism. It is a testament to capitalism that it can support different economic models for different businesses. While many bemoaned the lose of a lot of our "family" farms, what really happened is the the less productive farms were replaced. Those that didn't want to or could not afford to change lost out to those that adapted and upgraded. Today there are no more porductive farmers on the face of the earth. The plain fact is that the US, by itself could almost entirely feed the rest of the world, if the money was right. The equipment improvements have led to few people being able to produce more. Tractoes now come with two way radios and air conditioning. The combines are huge. It takes less manpower it do the work. Then we have the inovations in science. Better seed, more drought resistance, more bug resistant, more pesticide resistant, better yields, and easier to harvest (amoung a lot more). While the amount of land under the plow continues to shrink, the amount produced continues to grow. All done for money and profit.

Russia today struggles to try and turn around a country that was once termed the "bread basket" of Europe. It farming industry is in ruins and it will take decades to get it back in shape if every. One of the biggest problems is that it never modernized enough to compete. Now they are at that point were it would be cheaper to import than to grow. This is espeecially true since they (along with the Euros) seem to be resistant to the better GM crops.

What do we learn? People just don't try to improve things just to make it better for someone else. A farmer that will never see the benefits of improve crop yields has no drive to make them better. As history has shown, it just makes it go backwards. If you and your nieghbor both get the same amount of reward, yet he puts in half the effort, soon enough you are only putting in half yourself and thing go down hill rapidly.

In all societies we have to balance individual rights with states rights. The bigger and mroe complex a society thte more rights we as individuals must give up in order for that society to function properly. We must also balance social needs with individual needs as well. We have been at the one extreme, feudal systems, dictatorships, etc. We have yet to make it to the other extreme and we never will. What does happen is that as we get more productive, we tend to be more generous with the extra. Modern social systems tend to have more of a safety net than crude ones. You can't go to Africa and expect social safety nets. They are created from the excess production we chose to spend for those programs. If you have no excess, there will be no programs. 100 years ago, here in the US no one would have ever thought that unversal health care was a problem. If someone couldn't afford to have a doctor or one wasn't around, it was excepted that those people would die. If you didn't work or you lost your job, you didn't eat. Now, with some of our excess production we ahve such things as unemployment, welfare, job training programs, and we are getting closer to unversal health care. I think the US will do it differently than any of the others. It will likely be modeled on or be an extension of medicare. Allowing insurance companies to compete in giving the best benefits for the dollar. I sure hope we don't get stuck with the Canadian mode (but that is for a different thread).

The other thing that we are undergoing is a globalization of the market place. The companies are way ahead of the governments on this one. The labor market is switching to were labor is cheaper. This is a good thing for all involved. Those in advanced markets get DVD players at low prices, allowing them to have higher standards of living and the poorer countries get hard cold cash. While they may not work in the best conditions right now, several things will occur. First, infrastructure has to be built to support the manufactoring. Businesses work better when the people can get to work and aren't sick. Second, those people will start to make things better not only for themselves but for their children. Education levels, work standards, etc. All will rise until the market gets to were it is cheaper to move to another area and the process will repeat. What we will wind up with, down the road, is that we will have things spread out naturally and over the long run than they are now. You will get the global minimum levels that the communists want but we will retain the capitalist incentive we need to move forward.

The bottom line is it will be driven by capitalism and not communism. Communism is an attempt to deny human nature. Let nature take its course. The end will be much better.

[Velociryx]

Well said, Meldor, and welcome to the fray!

-=Vel=-

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Og, I couldn't have said it better myself! Surely after all those test runs, *somebody* musta implemented communism correctly.

You forget the stranglehold Stalin had on the Communist Parties of the world. Once he deformed the Communist International, how would it be possible for a party made in Stalin's image to produce anything but a country in Stalin's image?

You also forget the extreme hostility of the West towards these countries, while giving money hand over fist to the dictatorships of those friendly to the West.

So while one set o countries gets bombs, terrorists, and blockades, the other gets financial and military aid and prefertial trade agreements. Gee, I wonder which country will do better?

You also forget it took the captialist countries hundreds of years to get to the high level of development they have today (with the exception of the East Asians). England and the US were both hells for working class people, really up until after WWII. So what took the English 200 years and the US 100 years should take the USSR less? When they started from a much higher level of culture to begin with?

Meldor, take the human nature BS to the human nature thread. There's no point in replicating arguments here.

[DaShi]

Actually, he has a valid point. Is that why you're so quickly dismissing it?