Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[lpetrich]

AOC noted "But also, I feel like it’s not a coincidence that virtually every DSA candidate has been a person of color. I don’t think that’s an accident."

Referring to the Democratic Socialists of America. I think that it's from appealing to people who feel shut out of the political system, like that black man who stated that he thinks that politics is only for honkies.

JB then stated that he considers being a socialist part of his identity. After Bernie Sanders's campaign ended, he was taking a shower, and he thought to himself “You know what? Slavery was capitalism.” In the interview, he continued with "Black people were capital. We were property, and we had a price. That’s what capital is. It’s a piece of property, and that’s what we were. It’s messed up that capitalism brought Black people over here."

Capitalism apologists often respond that slavery was Not True Capitalism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is *a* form of capitalism. Antebellum-South plantation owners bought and sold slaves, and the crops that they grew were all cash crops. Subsistence farmers don't grow lots of tobacco and cotton and sugarcane.

Capitalism apologists often snicker that worker-run cooperatives are a form of capitalism, and I think that they are right about that. But it involves collective ownership of a business, something that they normally claim to oppose. Yet they don't object to stock ownership and business partnerships, both forms of collective ownership, even if very limited forms of it.

 

[lpetrich]

AOC on a common stereotype: "Fox News would have everyone believe that a socialist goes to college, and then some radical professor makes them read Marx and Engels, and then they’re just like, “I’m a socialist!” And then they march out into the world and try to set everything on fire."

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think it’s a totally different reality coming from a community of color or a working-class background, at least for me. You live your life, raised by your family, and there are all of these kinds of explanations, frankly, that are excuses for whatever your family is going through, that society has put you through. Like, you don’t have a good job because you didn’t work hard enough. Or a family is in generational poverty because that’s what they deserve. That’s the ultimate implication of a given argument about it: If you just worked harder, you, too, could have riches.

Seems like the Just World Fallacy, a form of Panglossianism.

BRISPORT: I’m glad that all the candidates were candidates of color or immigrants or the children of immigrants because I think being from a marginalized group allows you to fight that much harder for everyone. Why would you ever want anyone else on the planet to go through what you’ve been through? I’m proud. I am very proud to be the first openly gay Black state legislator—any color, actually.

Many right-wingers respond to that with "I went through it, therefore you must go through it also." But do they say about being mugged that everybody else must also be mugged because of that? Do they object to people being able to buy themselves out of experiences that they are supposed to have?

 

[lpetrich]

JB then gets into

Whether you’re an elderly Caribbean woman or a yuppie white dude, everyone is struggling to make sure there’s a roof over their head. And there’s a clear reason for that, with the never-ending donations that pour in from the real estate lobby into Albany. That’s a really clear way to unite people in a class struggle against a certain class of people that keeps trying to bend the political system to their own favor.

Then AOC asked JB if there was anything that he wanted to ask her. He asked about "the Squad", a clique of friends that AOC has in Congress.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: It’s been so priceless and immeasurably important to have this sisterhood. It’s kind of growing into a family. Honestly, I don’t even know if I would have been able to survive my first year, politically and emotionally, without them. Those relationships for me go so far beyond politics. A lot of people call each other friends in politics, and they’re not, or it’s incredibly transactional. To have this unconditional love that we’ve had has been so important. Especially when I have to go to D.C. for votes, it’s so incredible to be able to call [Congresswoman] Ayanna [Pressley], or anyone of them, and for us to have a pizza night and just kind of vent about the unique things that we’re going through because we are targeted as people who speak up to an establishment that is calcified in both the Republican and the Democratic parties. Take full advantage of those bonds because it’s what will help you survive. It’s what will help you thrive.

Many right-wingers seem like they have no friends in all the world. They seem like they adore their superiors at work and similar sorts of people but hate everybody else in the world.

But that aside, it's good that AOC has gotten some close-up social support.

 

[Derec]

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think it’s a totally different reality coming from a community of color or a working-class background, at least for me.

She is barely tanned (only considered so-called poc because she is Spanish speaking. If she spoke Italian instead, she'd be considered a white woman) and her father was an architect, which is hardly a "working-class background".

Like, you don’t have a good job because you didn’t work hard enough.

Or because your lifestyle of travelling 1000s of miles by car to protest oil is not exactly conducive to a 9-5 full time career as an economist, so you get a job tending bar instead.

BRISPORT: I’m glad that all the candidates were candidates of color or immigrants or the children of immigrants because I think being from a marginalized group allows you to fight that much harder for everyone.

Sounds like the fallacy that being a minority automatically makes you more virtuous than whitey.

Many right-wingers respond to that with "I went through it, therefore you must go through it also."

Seems like a straw right-winger. That is actually closer to the argument made in earnest by many left-wingers actually. That because blacks were discriminated against in the past, it is not only ok but virtuous to discriminate against whites now.

 

[Derec]

JB then stated that he considers being a socialist part of his identity. After Bernie Sanders's campaign ended, he was taking a shower, and he thought to himself “You know what? Slavery was capitalism.” In the interview, he continued with "Black people were capital. We were property, and we had a price. That’s what capital is. It’s a piece of property, and that’s what we were. It’s messed up that capitalism brought Black people over here."

What simplistic idiocy! In reality, capitalism made slavery redundant through use of first coal, and then oil and electricity powered machines. It is no accident that slavery was abolished first in the more industrialized North.

Capitalism apologists often respond that slavery was Not True Capitalism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is *a* form of capitalism. Antebellum-South plantation owners bought and sold slaves, and the crops that they grew were all cash crops. Subsistence farmers don't grow lots of tobacco and cotton and sugarcane.

Slavery existed for most of human history in some form of another. But it is the capitalist societies that abolished it and made it morally unacceptable.

Capitalism apologists often snicker that worker-run cooperatives are a form of capitalism, and I think that they are right about that. But it involves collective ownership of a business, something that they normally claim to oppose. Yet they don't object to stock ownership and business partnerships, both forms of collective ownership, even if very limited forms of it.

Voluntary collective ownership is of course welcomed under capitalism. And as you say, it can take many formed from worker co-ops to publicly traded corporations.
Where the objection lies it in the state trying to seize the means of production by forcibly collectivizing businesses. Obviously that is taking away that freedom to choose how to organize a business.

 

[Derec]

BRISPORT: People hear “socialism,” and they think that it’ll be an end to all the good stuff they like, that somebody is going to swoop in and steal everything from them. That they’ll have to have a breadline and a can of tomato soup, and that’ll be it.

Well that's what actually existing socialism has meant in practice.

But for me, it’s really about getting people out from underneath the thumb of capitalism, and freeing them from the very small group of people that manage—or I should say mismanage—our economy and our society for their own wealth and benefit.

He got it backward. It is socialism and the centrally planned economy where a very small group of people (mis)manage the economy. Under capitalism, or market economy, economic decisions are made by millions (and globally billions) of individual market actors.

It’s about freeing up people to truly experience all the joys in life by making sure they don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll be able to keep their home from month to month, or whether or not they’ll be able to pay for health care when they get sick.

And socialism is going to help how? In socialist and oil-rich Venezuela they have gas shortages in addition to food shortages and massive hyperinflation. That's almost as bad as Sahara declaring a sand shortage.

It’s about freeing people from all the existential havoc that capitalism wreaks on us, and allowing them to truly thrive.

Which is why people flee the capitalist hellscape of Miami to reach freedom and prosperity of socialist Cuba.


Oh, wait.

Shows what an ill-conceived slogan it is. "Defund" suggests abolishing rather than scaling back and avoiding policing for many things.

Well even scaling back is a problem when you do it across the board because cities like NYC need a lot of policing.
One approach would be to repeal laws that serve no good purpose. For example, who is helped when police and court resources are wasted simply to prosecute consenting adults having sex for money?

 

[lpetrich]

She is barely tanned (only considered so-called poc because she is Spanish speaking. If she spoke Italian instead, she'd be considered a white woman) and her father was an architect, which is hardly a "working-class background".

AOC is far from alone in being a Hispanic who may reasonably be called a white Hispanic. But in the 19th century, some Americans considered Irish people, Southern Europeans, and Eastern Europeans nonwhite.

Or because your lifestyle of travelling 1000s of miles by car to protest oil is not exactly conducive to a 9-5 full time career as an economist, so you get a job tending bar instead.

One trip does not a career make.

BRISPORT: I’m glad that all the candidates were candidates of color or immigrants or the children of immigrants because I think being from a marginalized group allows you to fight that much harder for everyone.

Sounds like the fallacy that being a minority automatically makes you more virtuous than whitey.

I think that it's more like Ayanna Pressley's "The people closest to the pain, should be the closest to the power, driving & informing the policymaking"

JB then stated that he considers being a socialist part of his identity. After Bernie Sanders's campaign ended, he was taking a shower, and he thought to himself “You know what? Slavery was capitalism.” In the interview, he continued with "Black people were capital. We were property, and we had a price. That’s what capital is. It’s a piece of property, and that’s what we were. It’s messed up that capitalism brought Black people over here."

What simplistic idiocy! In reality, capitalism made slavery redundant through use of first coal, and then oil and electricity powered machines.

It wasn't capitalism that did that, it was development of technology. What Jabari Brisport was saying was that slavery worked according to market mechanisms.

Capitalism apologists often respond that slavery was Not True Capitalism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is *a* form of capitalism. Antebellum-South plantation owners bought and sold slaves, and the crops that they grew were all cash crops. Subsistence farmers don't grow lots of tobacco and cotton and sugarcane.

Slavery existed for most of human history in some form of another. But it is the capitalist societies that abolished it and made it morally unacceptable.

So you think that capitalism didn't exist before the last few centuries? If it didn't exist, then what did? Are you really claiming that nobody every bought or sold anything before recent centuries?

But for me, it’s really about getting people out from underneath the thumb of capitalism, and freeing them from the very small group of people that manage—or I should say mismanage—our economy and our society for their own wealth and benefit.

He got it backward. It is socialism and the centrally planned economy where a very small group of people (mis)manage the economy. Under capitalism, or market economy, economic decisions are made by millions (and globally billions) of individual market actors.

Utopian nonsense. Markets sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. Capitalism tends to produce oligarchs who use their wealth to get outsized political influence. Including trying to keep everybody else from competing with them and making everybody poor but them and their favorite people. The antebellum South is a good example of the world that they try to make: an oligarchy of slave-plantation owners keeping everybody else poor, whether they were free or enslaved. Some capitalism apologists respond with arguments to the effect that business leaders compulsively try to increase labor costs as much as possible. I'm phrasing this argument in terms of something that they normally dislike.

 

[Harry Bosch]

AOC noted "But also, I feel like it’s not a coincidence that virtually every DSA candidate has been a person of color. I don’t think that’s an accident."

Referring to the Democratic Socialists of America. I think that it's from appealing to people who feel shut out of the political system, like that black man who stated that he thinks that politics is only for honkies.

JB then stated that he considers being a socialist part of his identity. After Bernie Sanders's campaign ended, he was taking a shower, and he thought to himself “You know what? Slavery was capitalism.” In the interview, he continued with "Black people were capital. We were property, and we had a price. That’s what capital is. It’s a piece of property, and that’s what we were. It’s messed up that capitalism brought Black people over here."

Capitalism apologists often respond that slavery was Not True Capitalism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is *a* form of capitalism. Antebellum-South plantation owners bought and sold slaves, and the crops that they grew were all cash crops. Subsistence farmers don't grow lots of tobacco and cotton and sugarcane.

Capitalism apologists often snicker that worker-run cooperatives are a form of capitalism, and I think that they are right about that. But it involves collective ownership of a business, something that they normally claim to oppose. Yet they don't object to stock ownership and business partnerships, both forms of collective ownership, even if very limited forms of it.

Sorry, but BS has it backwards. People have far more freedom in the typical capitalist system than a socialist society. In the typical capitalist system, people own their their labor and their capital (which is really just stored up labor). In a socialist system, you own only what the biggest bully in the area allows you to own.

 

[lpetrich]

JB then stated that he considers being a socialist part of his identity. After Bernie Sanders's campaign ended, he was taking a shower, and he thought to himself “You know what? Slavery was capitalism.” In the interview, he continued with "Black people were capital. We were property, and we had a price. That’s what capital is. It’s a piece of property, and that’s what we were. It’s messed up that capitalism brought Black people over here."

Sorry, but BS has it backwards. People have far more freedom in the typical capitalist system than a socialist society. In the typical capitalist system, people own their their labor and their capital (which is really just stored up labor). In a socialist system, you own only what the biggest bully in the area allows you to own.

Harry Bosch is clearly using definitions of "capitalism" and "socialism" very different from definitions that Jabari Brisport and AOC use. In particular, his notion of capitalism closely resembles a classic conception of socialism: workers owning the means of production. Also, what he calls socialism is what often happens in capitalism: rule by arrogant oligarchs. In Livestream: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the New Left (video and transcript) AOC explains what she means by capitalism and socialism.

AOC: So I think the tough part about this, about, “Is capitalism redeemable?” et cetera, is that it’s hard to have these conversations, I think, as a society, because we all have different ideas of what — just in the public imagination, there are different ideas of, “What does capitalism mean? What does socialism mean?” et cetera. But for me, when I think about what those definitions are, capitalism, to me, it’s an ideology of capital. It puts capital — the most important thing is the concentration of capital, and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else, and we seek it at any human and environmental cost. That is what that means. And to me, that ideology is not sustainable, and cannot be redeemed.

But when we talk about ideas, for example, like democratic socialism, it means putting democracy and society first, instead of capital first. It doesn’t mean that you put other things last. It doesn’t mean that the actual concept of capital as a society should be abolished or anything like that. But it’s a question of our priorities. Right now, I think what we are reckoning with are the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society. Because what it means is, people getting paid less than what it takes to live. What it means is people that need insulin die because they can’t afford it, even though us as a society can afford it, and also because insulin was originally made free because the idea of having to pay to live seemed crazy, even to the people who discovered it.

And so for me, it’s a question of priorities, and right now I don’t think our priorities are sustainable. But there’s also, again, in the public imagination a lot of fear mongering about what democratic socialism means, that government is going to take over the private sector, and in fact, in my opinion, those two things need to be separate, and what we’re actually experiencing right now is the opposite. What we are experiencing is — just as there is all this fearmongering that government is going to take over every corporation, and government is going to take over every business, or every form of production, we should be scared right now, because corporations have taken over our government.

In my opinion, we should be wary of any entity in which both of those things are combined, whether it’s through one way or the other. That’s why the emphasis in democratic socialism, is on democracy. It’s not about, you know — it’s just as much a transformation about bringing democracy to the workplace, so that we have a say, and we don’t check all of our rights at the door every time we cross the threshold into our workplace. Because at the end of the day, as workers and as people of society, we’re the ones creating wealth, not a corporate CEO. It’s not a CEO that’s actually creating 4 billion dollars a year. It is the millions of workers in this country that’s creating billions of dollars of economic productivity a year. Our system should reflect that.

This article may also be enligtening: What is Democratic Socialism? - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

The DSA and AOC all reject the Marxist-Leninist form of socialism, and they both endorse worker-owned cooperatives. I myself myself consider that a form of capitalism, though it is a non-elitist form, a form disdained by many capitalism apologists.

 

[angelo]

If AOC and her ilk really did their homework before becoming keyboard warriors and posting shite she'd know that free market capitalism is by far the better choice between two flawed systems.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Harry Bosch is clearly using definitions of "capitalism" and "socialism" very different from definitions that Jabari Brisport and AOC use. In particular, his notion of capitalism closely resembles a classic conception of socialism: workers owning the means of production. Also, what he calls socialism is what often happens in capitalism: rule by arrogant oligarchs. In Livestream: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the New Left (video and transcript) AOC explains what she means by capitalism and socialism.

AOC: So I think the tough part about this, about, “Is capitalism redeemable?” et cetera, is that it’s hard to have these conversations, I think, as a society, because we all have different ideas of what — just in the public imagination, there are different ideas of, “What does capitalism mean? What does socialism mean?” et cetera. But for me, when I think about what those definitions are, capitalism, to me, it’s an ideology of capital. It puts capital — the most important thing is the concentration of capital, and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else, and we seek it at any human and environmental cost. That is what that means. And to me, that ideology is not sustainable, and cannot be redeemed.

But when we talk about ideas, for example, like democratic socialism, it means putting democracy and society first, instead of capital first. It doesn’t mean that you put other things last. It doesn’t mean that the actual concept of capital as a society should be abolished or anything like that. But it’s a question of our priorities. Right now, I think what we are reckoning with are the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society. Because what it means is, people getting paid less than what it takes to live. What it means is people that need insulin die because they can’t afford it, even though us as a society can afford it, and also because insulin was originally made free because the idea of having to pay to live seemed crazy, even to the people who discovered it.

And so for me, it’s a question of priorities, and right now I don’t think our priorities are sustainable. But there’s also, again, in the public imagination a lot of fear mongering about what democratic socialism means, that government is going to take over the private sector, and in fact, in my opinion, those two things need to be separate, and what we’re actually experiencing right now is the opposite. What we are experiencing is — just as there is all this fearmongering that government is going to take over every corporation, and government is going to take over every business, or every form of production, we should be scared right now, because corporations have taken over our government.

In my opinion, we should be wary of any entity in which both of those things are combined, whether it’s through one way or the other. That’s why the emphasis in democratic socialism, is on democracy. It’s not about, you know — it’s just as much a transformation about bringing democracy to the workplace, so that we have a say, and we don’t check all of our rights at the door every time we cross the threshold into our workplace. Because at the end of the day, as workers and as people of society, we’re the ones creating wealth, not a corporate CEO. It’s not a CEO that’s actually creating 4 billion dollars a year. It is the millions of workers in this country that’s creating billions of dollars of economic productivity a year. Our system should reflect that.

This article may also be enligtening: What is Democratic Socialism? - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

The DSA and AOC all reject the Marxist-Leninist form of socialism, and they both endorse worker-owned cooperatives. I myself myself consider that a form of capitalism, though it is a non-elitist form, a form disdained by many capitalism apologists.

I've actually studied worker owned co-ops before. My wife worked for one (in a sense); it was very successful. The issue is that not all industries make sense in this model. So, just don't force it others. My ultimate problem with most socialists is that they tend to be dictatorial (which is very ironic if you think about it).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've actually studied worker owned co-ops before. My wife worked for one (in a sense); it was very successful. The issue is that not all industries make sense in this model. So, just don't force it others. My ultimate problem with most socialists is that they tend to be dictatorial (which is very ironic if you think about it).

There's also the issue that in bad economic times they tend not to be resilient. They try too hard not to lay off workers and often end up with the whole company failing instead.

 

[Derec]

This article may also be enligtening: What is Democratic Socialism? - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.

What they seem to advocate is a form of socialism that was practiced in Titoist Yugoslavia.

While kinder, softer and more flexible than Soviet- or Chinese style actually existing socialism, it still proved to be a failure.

The DSA and AOC all reject the Marxist-Leninist form of socialism,

I would agree on the Leninist part, but they seem to sit comfortably within the Marxist orthodoxy.

and they both endorse worker-owned cooperatives. I myself myself consider that a form of capitalism, though it is a non-elitist form, a form disdained by many capitalism apologists.

Government-forced worker-owned cooperatives, as DSA wants, is very much socialism.

 

[Derec]

AOC is far from alone in being a Hispanic who may reasonably be called a white Hispanic. But in the 19th century, some Americans considered Irish people, Southern Europeans, and Eastern Europeans nonwhite.

Yes, racism makes no sense. Including the latter day racism of leftist identity politics that treats "people of color" as somehow morally superior to white people while pretending that having Spanish-speaking ancestors or being Muslim somehow renders you "brown" (thus giving you access to poc privileges) no matter your actual hue.

One trip does not a career make.

I used that trip as a particularly poignant example. A job tending bar offers more flexibility for activism trips and other activities than a professional career.

I think that it's more like Ayanna Pressley's "The people closest to the pain, should be the closest to the power, driving & informing the policymaking"

But again, "pain" is equated with skin color. And I do not agree that pain should be a prerequisite for political power either.

It wasn't capitalism that did that, it was development of technology.

Technology, yes, and I said as much. But technology developed because the inventors could profit from the fruits of their inventiveness. Many people tinkered with steam engines in the 18th century because bringing a better steam engine on the market promised profits. Socialism saps initiative, and slows technological progress. Take the East German Trabant car, which wasn't significantly improved between when it was introduced in 1957 and when East Germany was reunited with West Germany in 1990. Only then did the Trabant get a 4 stroke engine, from a VW Polo.

What Jabari Brisport was saying was that slavery worked according to market mechanisms.

Market mechanisms have applied as long as there were humans. Socialism trying to circumvent market mechanisms leads to a lot of dysfunction, like the most oil-rich country in the world having to import gasoline. Blaming market mechanisms for something like slavery is foolishness.

So you think that capitalism didn't exist before the last few centuries? If it didn't exist, then what did? Are you really claiming that nobody every bought or sold anything before recent centuries?

Markets existed for as long as there were humans, and even chimps are known to engage in rudimentary trade (including the world's oldest profession, something frowned upon by many doctrinaire Leftists). But capitalism is not synonymous with markets, although markets are an important feature of it. Capitalism developed as capital investment became more and more important as technology became more advanced and more complicated, necessitating more complex manufacturing processes, eventually resulting in the industrial revolution.

Utopian nonsense. Markets sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.

I never said that market failures do not happen. Of course they do. Which is why capitalist societies still need government intervention to correct them.
My point is that economic decision making in centrally planned socialist economies is concentrated while in capitalist market economies it is distributed across many market actors. How many shoes get produced is part of a 5 year plan under centrally planned socialism, but in capitalism no single entity decides that, but rather you have the sum of the decisions individual producers make.

Capitalism tends to produce oligarchs who use their wealth to get outsized political influence.

There are many more Jeff Bezoses and Elon Musks in the US than there were Politburo members in the USSR. And their influence in politics and economy is far smaller than that of party apparatchiks.
As powerful as Bezos is within the Amazon empire, he could not even get his headquarters built in Queens. That should tell you how much "outsized" political influence he really possesses.

Including trying to keep everybody else from competing with them and making everybody poor but them and their favorite people.

What are you talking about? How is capitalism making everybody but "them an their favorite people" poor? On the contrary, capitalism has led to increase in standards of living of common people.

The antebellum South is a good example of the world that they try to make: an oligarchy of slave-plantation owners keeping everybody else poor, whether they were free or enslaved.

The agrarian South is not a good example of capitalism. Antebellum South was stuck in something more resembling mercantilism. The more industrialized and capital intensive North is a far better example.
In any case, those you call "capitalism apologists" do not seek to go back to an agrarian system, and certainly not an agrarian system with slavery.

Some capitalism apologists respond with arguments to the effect that business leaders compulsively try to increase labor costs as much as possible. I'm phrasing this argument in terms of something that they normally dislike.

I am not quite sure what you mean here. Can you clarify?

 

[Harry Bosch]

I've actually studied worker owned co-ops before. My wife worked for one (in a sense); it was very successful. The issue is that not all industries make sense in this model. So, just don't force it others. My ultimate problem with most socialists is that they tend to be dictatorial (which is very ironic if you think about it).

There's also the issue that in bad economic times they tend not to be resilient. They try too hard not to lay off workers and often end up with the whole company failing instead.

True. The real problem with worker owned co-ops are their decision making process tends to be slower and more convoluted as an entity grows. The success or failure of an organization is dependent upon the decisions that it makes. Most worker controlled entities are just too slow and/or indecisive.

 

[angelo]

If a worker owned co-op happens to make a profit, is this plowed back into the co-op, or is it shared by the workers, meaning the co-op remains stagnant with no possibility of growth, which in turn eventually means less employment. Derec's example of the East German made vehicle Trabant is a perfect example. Socialism will always stifle incentive.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If a worker owned co-op happens to make a profit, is this plowed back into the co-op, or is it shared by the workers, meaning the co-op remains stagnant with no possibility of growth, which in turn eventually means less employment. Derec's example of the East German made vehicle Trabant is a perfect example. Socialism will always stifle incentive.

This isn't inevitable.

 

[lpetrich]

If AOC and her ilk really did their homework before becoming keyboard warriors and posting shite she'd know that free market capitalism is by far the better choice between two flawed systems.

Except that there are lots of variations of capitalism and socialism and lots of mixtures.

Worker-owned cooperatives are praised as socialism by some people and disdained as socialism by some other people, but I consider them a form of capitalism, since they participate in a market economy. The disdainers here seem to reject cooperatives because they involve rejection of rule by an economic elite.

It wasn't capitalism that did that, it was development of technology.

Technology, yes, and I said as much. But technology developed because the inventors could profit from the fruits of their inventiveness. ...

Which does not explain the development of military technology, since government military forces are effectively socialist by many socialism-bashers' apparent definitions of socialism. According to socialism-bashers' favorite arguments, they ought to be like Trabants, while mercenaries would be like VW's.

What Jabari Brisport was saying was that slavery worked according to market mechanisms.

Market mechanisms have applied as long as there were humans. Socialism trying to circumvent market mechanisms leads to a lot of dysfunction, like the most oil-rich country in the world having to import gasoline.

Government military and police forces circumvent market mechanisms for protection like mercenaries and hired guards.

Blaming market mechanisms for something like slavery is foolishness.

That is very silly, since governments didn't force people to buy slaves.

Capitalism tends to produce oligarchs who use their wealth to get outsized political influence.

...
As powerful as Bezos is within the Amazon empire, he could not even get his headquarters built in Queens. That should tell you how much "outsized" political influence he really possesses.

Bad example. He hasn't been buying as much influence as the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson or the Mercer family. Consider how much action on global warming the Koch brothers have obstructed.

It has to be significant that many right-wingers make a villain out of George Soros. It seems to me that they project onto their targets how they themselves are financed.

Including trying to keep everybody else from competing with them and making everybody poor but them and their favorite people.

What are you talking about? How is capitalism making everybody but "them an their favorite people" poor? On the contrary, capitalism has led to increase in standards of living of common people.

Which doesn't explain business managements' hostility to organized labor, even though those business managements are often organized in Chambers of Commerce and the like. It's almost as if only business leaders have a right to be organized.

The antebellum South is a good example of the world that they try to make: an oligarchy of slave-plantation owners keeping everybody else poor, whether they were free or enslaved.

The agrarian South is not a good example of capitalism. Antebellum South was stuck in something more resembling mercantilism. The more industrialized and capital intensive North is a far better example.
In any case, those you call "capitalism apologists" do not seek to go back to an agrarian system, and certainly not an agrarian system with slavery.

"Mercantilism" seems like some way of saying "not true capitalism".

 

[ZiprHead]

If a worker owned co-op happens to make a profit, is this plowed back into the co-op, or is it shared by the workers, meaning the co-op remains stagnant with no possibility of growth, which in turn eventually means less employment. Derec's example of the East German made vehicle Trabant is a perfect example. Socialism will always stifle incentive.

If a CEO running business happens to make a profit, is this plowed back into the business, or is it distributed to the chief officers of the business, meaning the business remains stagnant with no possibility of growth, which in turn eventually means less employment. The example of Sears consumed by vulture capitalists is a perfect example. Capitalism will always stifle incentive.

 

[angelo]

In a nutshell Socialism means big government and astronomical taxing rates. Capitalism mean small government and lower taxes and much more incentive.

With socialism, everyone is equally poor. Except for the few at the top who dictate to the masses what's good for them. Prime examples are Cuba and Venezuela.