Doesn't the service industry preclude communist revolt?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kucinich

Originally posted by GePap

Yup. The US was non-democratic then. It was close to democracy, but not there. It was more democratic than any of the monarchies in Europe, but not a democracy.

Just as you are changing the definition of capitalism to one of your own, you are tyring to do so for democracy.

The notion of democracy was invented by a society in which only a small potion of the full population can vote. Whether you would consider it democratic is irrelevant-the US was a dmeocracy, and no, just the right to make contracts does not define Capitalism.

[Kuciwalker]

Ah, so the revolutionaries in Russia actually were implementing communism, because that was their idea of it. Got it

And no, the right to contract does not define capitalism. There's also property

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Ah, so the revolutionaries in Russia actually were implementing communism, because that was their idea of it. Got it

NO-the point of what I told you is that a self-definition (ususally self-serving) won't fly. So the US was a democracy in 1789, and no, Stalinists were statist socialists trying to "build communism", through state control of the economy.

And no, the right to contract does not define capitalism. There's also property

Which also existed in the mercantalist system.

[Velociryx]

Keep right on tellin' yourself that, sunshine.

In the meantime, the capitalistic-oriented economies of the world will continue to chug along, out-producing and out-classing all the other economic models out there while you guys keep chanting the same paper-thin mantra hoping to attract a few more listeners.

At the end of the day, here's what we know:

Your Comrades from previous generations sure gave it one helluva shot.

They beat their heads against that particular wall till they gave themselves a concussion.

And what do they have to show for it?

Breadlines.

That was the pinnicle of Commie Development.

I'll pass, thanks.

-=Vel=-

[Agathon]

Obtuse - Meaning lacking quickness of perception or intellect

Dictionary on hand, eh?

Yes and when there isn't and the opposite is true, they have shown an equal propensity to pollute. Why do you think companies pollute so much when it isn't really in their long term interest to do so. Pollution is a way of externalizing the costs of production on third parties. Companies aren't stupid, they don't pollute for no reason.

You admit this is a driver. So far so good and yes I agree left to their own companies will do what ever allows best returns.

You are missing the point here. I'm not arguing that this in fact is a best return. If everyone externalizes then we end up with a less than optimal state of affairs overall. If you want to avoid such collective action problems. the state is the only solution.

Except that this isn't all the time. Companies pollute for exactly the same reason that they lower prices to compete with each other - self interest. I can't believe I have to point this out to anyone, it's so obvious after all.

More of the same, so what?

In other words, the same reasons that markets produce collectively beneficial results mean that they also produce collectively malignant results.

This reasoning applies with just as much force to markets. They are destructive of the "commons" because there is a rational incentive not to - after all, if no one is going to punish you for reducing air quality you have no incentive to do so. The economic result is that we overuse commodities like gasoline because it's artificially cheap (because part of the cost has been externalized).

Thats demand you talk to. Which was the point of the original posit. For the stateless utopia to work their is an implicit understanding that demand is not impacted instead productivty nears infinite level in order to provide things that are near worthless. Ring any bells with artifically cheap.

But you don't have to believe in a stateless utopia to believe in communism, at least not my peculiar brand. Whatever the original post said does not matter. You, or one of your lot, were complaining about a Stalinist state. My point is that only a state can curb pollution effectively. A free market cannot, because no one has an incentive to do so.

Everyone would be better off if companies voluntarily reduced their polluting activities. But they aren't going to do that any more than they will voluntarily price their goods higher than their competitors. The incentive to pollute (higher profits) is still there and since all companies have the same incentive, all will pollute.

If demand would support a higher cost product to allow companies to reduce polluting activities then yes, i.e organically grown foods etc.

That's not the point I am making. It's a plain fact that, collectively, it can make sense to pollute, if the pollution increases overall efficiency. In other words we trade off some pollution for productivity gains. That is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about cases in which companies pollute because it is in their individual interest, even though it's not in everyone's collective interest that they do so.

The same goes for things like overpumping aquifers. If you have a bunch of farmers with no restrictions on their access to a commons (in this case an aquifer), all of them have good reason to overpump even though it will destroy their farms in the end. Even if they know it will, they have no reason to stop - that's why it is a perverse outcome.

Take the following scenario where each individual farmer can choose whether to overpump or not. The results pan out as follows:

1) I overpump, no one else does. (result - this is best for me since my overpumping on its own will not reduce the aquifer to a degree that will destroy all our farms and I will have a competitive advantage).

2) I don't overpump, no one else does. (result - this is best for everyone, but not for me individually - since #1 is better in that respect)

3) Everyone overpumps. (result - agriculture is destroyed)

4) Everyone else overpumps, I don't (this is clearly worse than #3 for me because everyone else gains the benefit from overpumping and I lose both my farm and am at a competitive disadvantage before the water runs out).

Because (from the point of view of self interest) #1 is better than #2 and #3 is better than #4 it is always in my interest to overpump, no matter what anyone else does (even if I know they won't, because #1 is better than #2). But every rational person will do that: hence we will end up with #3 (which is worse than #2)

What we need in this case is some entity that has the power to force people not to overpump - only the state can do this. Voluntary regulation won't work because it is in everyone's self interest to overpump no matter what.

This can only be stopped by coercion, by some entity with power enough to enforce pollution controls or pollution taxes (which boil down to the same thing). The entity which has such a monopoly of force is the state. As I said, only the state can effectively correct for such self defeating collective action problems. This does not mean that it always will (bad and incompetent states exist) but that only the state can.

So you again confirm my original post that a stateless communistic society can not enforce enviro action. At least in capitalistic societies sans state intervention there is the one driver you and I both alluded to above.

I was alluding to something other than what you were - namely, collective action problems. A market without state intervention in these respects will quickly lead to disaster.

The only possibility for a stateless society would be one in which those people involved in economic activity naturally inclined themselves to the second best situations (like the one in the water example). There are two ways this might come about, one if people just lost faith in the market system (possible since we already do act this way quite a lot of the time) or if human beings were not involved in making things (which is probably what will end up happening with advances in AI or GE).

So while I don't endorse the prospect of a stateless society, it doesn't mean that it is necessarily impossible since human nature is malleable (culturally and genetically) and machines even more so.

But that's besides the point, it simply wouldn't follow from the fact that a stateless utopia is impossible that we should be committed to some form of Stalinist horror. Moreover it doesn't follow that lassez-faire capitalism is a reasonable option.

Eh? It's worked fantastically well. That's what states do. Even in countries like the US. Why did the government impose car safety regulations on automakers if not for the greater good?

Still has nothing to do with my initial post regarding a stateless communistic society.

But it addresses the problems that a stateless capitalist society will encounter, which was my main point in bringing it up. The only possibility for a stateless society which did not encounter collective action problems would be a society in which economic actors acted for the overall good instead of a private good. The other option is the state enforcing sanctions on economic actors to prevent them from choosing option #1's over option #2's.

If we aren't to suffer from collective action problems we either need state intervention or economic actors will have to be such as to act naturally for the collective good. Either way the communists win.

You are assuming that the Soviet Union was really a "Marxist" society. It did have Marxist features but I don't think, after reading Marx, that it was particularly Marxist. In any case if you actually read Marx you would know that the communist society develops from wealthy industrialized countries, not from semi-feudal largely agrarian societies.

I believe I already alluded to the fact that USSR was not communistic. But since the claims exist that there never was a truely communistic modern society, one has to look at closest example, just as you love to poke at the US being capitalistic. But how many times has this issue gone round the wringer?

This is besides the point. A central idea of Marxism is that the economic substructure of society changes, bringing with it cultural changes (differences in people's expectations). One might as well object that failed attempts to institute a market system on a people who find it alien show that capitalism can do no good.

On the other hand you could point to countries with effective state enforced pollution controls.

Such as?

Pretty much any developed country you can think of.

You obviously have me painted as somebody else. I happen to believe that some form of communism is probably inevitable. But I don't think we should enact it right now - as of now a mixed economy is the only sensible solution. It works for the moment - why break it (as the radical right is attempting to do)?

I don't believe I painted you in any light wrt this point. And for the record I believe in a mixed society as well. Why break it (as the radical left is attempting to do)?

It's not the radical left that is trying to break the welfare state. The right have attacked it mercilessly since the late 70s.

If there is anything the radical left is doing, it is trying to extend the social contract which underpins the welfare state internationally, since international movement of capital undermines domestic sovereignty over welfare legislation. Similarly, as long as there is no global institution to deal with environmental problems, countries will attempt to externalize the costs of their environmental policies on others. That is the key to the internationalist tendencies of the left. In fact they are on solid ground here since the same arguments that apply to individual nations regarding the role of the state in correcting the economy, apply with even greater force to international relations.

Of course, the usual right-wing response to this is to say that nothing can be done and that international relations will always be based on power rather than consent. But relations within nations used to be based on power rather than consent, so that is not much of an argument.

Stick and stones but please come back when you have something meaningful to say.

Whenever one of us does, we have to spend hours explaining it to you lot.

Why in God's green earth did you bother to raise a defense of state, when the orginal post asked those who think the communist utopia is a stateless society?

Because you lot were invoking the old "statist, Stalinist horror" arguments.

What's pitiful is that the lefties on Apolyton run rings around you, to which you can only respond with the same cookie cutter arguments.


Whats pitiful is that you actually believe this tripe.

No, what is pitiful is that you don't even realize it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Agathon

The only possibility for a stateless society would be one in which those people involved in economic activity naturally inclined themselves to the second best situations (like the one in the water example). There are two ways this might come about, one if people just lost faith in the market system (possible since we already do act this way quite a lot of the time) or if human beings were not involved in making things (which is probably what will end up happening with advances in AI or GE).

So while I don't endorse the prospect of a stateless society, it doesn't mean that it is necessarily impossible since human nature is malleable (culturally and genetically) and machines even more so.

Here is the only thing that I was asking about. All the rest was simple posing and assumption on your part about my question.

As an aside do you habitually not read the question and assume the post is from that 'lot'. Stereotyping working for you much there Aggie?

Now for the translation:

People need to sacrifice and change their nature or they need to be controlled by machines.


Whooopee!! No solution.

[Agathon]

rinciple.

For example, say I wanted to know when I was allowed to hang on to my property and when I wasn't. To know that I have to answer the question of what maximizes utility, respecting the right, or not. But as soon as I've done that, I end up with property rights that are defined solely in utilitarian terms (specifically, "rule-utilitarian" terms), since the principle of utility determines when I have the right to keep my stuff and when I don't.

Why not?

In answering this question, you need to give an answer that appeals to rights or to utility (see what a pickle you are in?).

No, I'm not. The theory is clearly not utilitarian, because the goal is not to maximize happiness. No matter how much you say it, it isn't utilitarianism, because it doesn't meet the frigging definition of utilitarianism.

That particular definition of utilitarianism (preference satisfaction utilitarians would disagree with it, for a start).

The core of utilitarianism is its consequentialism, that means that actions and policies are evaluated according to their consequences, whether or not they increase overall benefit or not. Rights based theories are non-consequentialist. You could learn this from any introductory philosophy class.

You say that rights can be trumped for reasons of utility (or benefit, or call it what you want). That means that you think that respecting rights absolutely can lead to bad consequences and that the bad consequences matter more than the (absolute) rights. By doing this you have given utility conceptual priority over rights and once you do that utilitarian considerations eat up the idea of a right that has any independent justification other than utility (because a right that leads to bad consequences must never be respected).

Involving utility does not make it utilitarianism. The goal is to preserve the rights within the limits that are necessary, or nearly so, for the use of those rights. A moderated form of libertarianism could admit that the draft was acceptable in cases in which the survival of the nation is at risk, because if everyone is dead they can't really exercise any of their liberties.

I knew you would try this one.

Presumably your answer is that we must violate some rights in order to make sure that the number of overall rights violations are minimized (I've used this argument myself for tactical purposes against David Floyd numerous times). In this case you are a kind of utilitarian, but one that makes avoiding rights violations the goal rather than welfare or preference satisfaction.

But that immediately raises the question: what makes ten rights violations worse than one? Unless you can say what it is in non-question begging terms, you don't have a theory.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

People need to sacrifice and change their nature or they need to be controlled by machines.

Whooopee!! No solution.

So the transition from feudalism or a tribal economy to capitalism required no such change?

Do you not think that it is plausible that computer intelligence will exceede human intelligence in many areas in the next 100 years?

I particularly like how you managed to launch barbs at all communists whiel pretending not to.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Agathon


Do you not think that it is plausible that computer intelligence will exceede human intelligence in many areas in the next 100 years?

Quite possibly. And I suppose they'll be able to actually read a question as well.

I particularly like how you managed to launch barbs at all communists whiel pretending not to.

Pot or Kettle Aggie?

[Whaleboy]

I agree with this too.

Yep, these things exist, and have been, to some degree, successful, or at least self sustaining.

The problem is that these things are not economic systems, and it shows quite clearly that while the communist ideal works at the micro level, it is not scalable or sustainable.

Good little. Bad big.

That's been demonstrated time and time again, and I'm sorry Reds, I'm not buying into the excuse-driven arguments.

Until and unless you get a success under your belts at the national level, why on EARTH should we who espouse a currently thriving, working system, chuck it all to chase your globalized communistic utopia that has NEVER BEEN PROVED to be anything other than a train wreck?

Vel, this is bull. How much Marx have you read? What I see is that there are communist elements in any society, there is no such thing as capitalism free from communism and I dare say communism free from capitalism (to some degree). This of course begs mention of the myriad interpretations of communism, from accross the political spectrum. Do you honestly think that a large company operating in a free-market, libertarian ( ) society does not possess communist elements?

[Agathon]

Ogie, you said:

Hence I always love the arguement that states capitalism is raping the environment, when it is the very same conditions (only much worse) that they argue in order to enable their utopian communistic society

Which was missing the point, irrespective of whatever version of communism you hold.

The problem with capitalism and communism is not that they use environmental resources, but that the former always uses them inefficiently and causes unecessary damage, whilst the latter (under whichever guise you prefer) need not.

[Whaleboy]

And don't worry Agathon... I'm a libertarian that does not believe in natural rights

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Now for the translation:

People need to sacrifice and change their nature or they need to be controlled by machines.


Whooopee!! No solution.

Change what nature?

There is a reason I always bring up the Star Trek example- imagine people actually had something like a replicator: then in essence human beings would have no hand in the making of anything, and thus have no reason to do anything to harm the commons, yet they certainly would not be "under the control of machines", at least not more significantly than today, and realize that if today we had no mahcines our society would collapse into anarchy.

So the point is that we may reach a point at which all needs will be met, and so will mopst wants, and the economic system will be such that work (toil, labor) will not be necessary-if people which to compete for recognition and fame, they will be able to stick to art and sport as opposed to economic activities like farming or manufacturing.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
Ogie, you said:



Which was missing the point, irrespective of whatever version of communism you hold.

The problem with capitalism and communism is not that they use environmental resources, but that the former always uses them inefficiently and causes unecessary damage, whilst the latter (under whichever guise you prefer) need not.

Need not, but will.

Yet you have given 2 unrealistic circumstances where the utopian can achieve efficiency. (By realistically I mean within our lifetimes)

So you have not satisfied the claims made above
.

[Whaleboy]

When people start talking about utopia, I cease to take them seriously