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Why Socialism?
- Thread starter ksen
- Start date
Axulus
Veteran Member
Even if you want to eliminate money, oil can be bartered for things of value, allowing one to accumulate assets obtained via trading the oil. Or are you for eliminating private property all together?
And if that's the case, under what sense do the workers control the "means of production". "Yeah, you control the oil extraction equipment, but you don't actually own the products such means of production creates, so too bad."
Axulus
Veteran Member
You can produce far more product with a lot of capital than without it. You make it by trading the products the capital allows you to produce.
Under ksen's society, they make it either via selling the product for money or bartering it - it's not yet clear, as his idea seems to be a system in constant flux.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Um, ok? I can only assume you've got no rebuttal since you switched to ad hom. Perhaps pointing out the flaws is making you mad, and you are projecting?
untermensche
Contributor
If you are builders you can only make as fast as you can build, more capital, above the capital needed to finish the current job and pay everyone is not needed.
Axulus
Veteran Member
You can build faster the more capital that is available. The workers get to make a lot of money building houses since they keep all the profit from the houses and can build far more of them with lots of capital.
The real estate agent, however, isn't so lucky. She owns no capital. There is little capital that her industry could invest in to sell houses quicker since selling houses is primarily a labor intensive and low capital endeavor - pounding the pavement to attract people interested in selling and showing/selling the home to interested buyers, and holding their hand throughout the process.
In this kind of society, those workers who work in labor intensive low capital industries get screwed.
Ok.
Unless society outlaws such accumulation if it's used to exploit others.
I'm for eliminating the ability to exploit others through private property.
Since production would be done on the basis of need rather than profit generation I'm not sure what your point is or why there would be drive to continually make MOAR.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Once again, I see no rebuttal, just empty claims. My posts were an invitation for you to explain your system better. Hence why they included several questions. Asking for more details is not a straw man.
untermensche
Contributor
To build faster you need more people.
The same amount of people can only build so fast.
Axulus
Veteran Member
I'm talking about accumulating things to live the good life: big houses in the most desirable locations, fancy cars, nice dinners, nice vacations. I don't think enjoying these things is exploiting anyone, is it?
Can you give some examples?
Why would the workers who own the means of production choose to create products on the basis of "need" rather than profit generation and the drive to continually make "MOAR"?
Axulus
Veteran Member
The same amount of people with more capital can build faster. Yes, there is a limit, some point at which even more capital will translate into very little improvement, but you produce far more value with the same number of workers in industries that require a huge amount of capital (such as oil extraction, steel production, microprocessor manufacture, car manufacture) vs. industries that require little to none (barbers, real estate agents, bookkeepers, just about any service industry that contracts out their services, etc.).
You also have the option to invest in more capital (such as upgrading all equipment to the latest and greatest technologies). There is almost always room to improve production speed with more capital in industries that require a lot of capital. Alternatively, you can keep the amount of production the same but use fewer workers to maintain that production level the more capital you utilize. Utilizing fewer workers means there are fewer people you have to split the capital with if the workers in that industry own the means of production, which means more benefit goes to each remaining worker.
Anarchist thinking may be diverse, but if a thought is "hey, let's have a government" it ain't anarchist.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Another example of huge benefits that would go to relatively few workers: electricity generation.
There is a natural gas power plant in my city. It generates enough electricity to power up to 120,000 households.
This plant is largely automated - it requires very few workers to operate. It requires a few workers to monitor activity, a few guards, and routine maintenance workers (very little maintenance is required at the moment because the plant is only a few years old).
If those few workers got to split ownership of the power plant amongst themselves they would be instant multi-millionaires.
There is a natural gas power plant in my city. It generates enough electricity to power up to 120,000 households.
This plant is largely automated - it requires very few workers to operate. It requires a few workers to monitor activity, a few guards, and routine maintenance workers (very little maintenance is required at the moment because the plant is only a few years old).
If those few workers got to split ownership of the power plant amongst themselves they would be instant multi-millionaires.
Right. We'll just use unicorn feathers.
Who goes an gets them? What incentive do they have to get them? What if someone else wants the steel, or the ditch digging equipment, or the workers -- how do you get them?
So this committee decides what everyone's wants and needs are and makes all the necessary decisions to bring them about? It decides if that pile of steel should got to pipelines, refineries, cell phone towers, automobiles, and the infinite other possible uses of steel? But first it also decides there should be a pile of steel instead of a pile of aluminum or bananas or cell phones or Britney Spears CDs?
How does it decide these things in the absence of money and prices?
What sort of maths tell you how much someone wants a cell phone that does not yet exist or a banana or a car or a Britney Spears CD?
No, enjoying those things is not exploitative in and of itself. It's how you currently get the means to be able to enjoy those things that can be exploitative.
Using ownership of the means of production to exploit workers with sub-optimal wages is one example.
Because in the society I'm talking about there is no profit. Production is done for use not for generating profit.
Doesn't sound like owning a mean of production gets you much of anything in ksentopia. "They" come and take the power and do what they want with it.
Seems like it's being on this committee that decides everything for everyone that will get you wealth and power.
How did money and price signals tell how much people wanted cell phones before cell phones were invented? Or transistors? Or the internet? Or Tang?
You do realize, don't you, that cell phones and cd technology were invented by the government and then later adapted for consumer use?
Bananas didn't have to be invented it just took someone to figure out that you could peel them and eat them without dying a horrible death.
And as for cars I believe they are completely a product of private enterprise but they've really been terrible for society.
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Sure is a lot of concern about muh wealth and muh power itt.
When are people going to realize that the military is a socialist institution? So are the police and fire departments. We already have a ton of socialism in Amurica, even if you don't realize it.