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I mean, it applies to all economic activity! It’s pretty normal for people to have aspirations of what they want to do with their life, right? Maybe someone wants to cook meals for their community! Or maybe they want to fix people’s plumbing for them. Or hell, maybe they just want to program software (a video game maybe?) for other people to use. It’s normal and good for people to imagine ways they could be useful to their community, and to try to make that happen, isn’t it?
I suppose one answer could be that we don’t own our labor, either; we do the work the government tells us to, and if we have an idea we should submit it to the relevant planning authority. But that sounds more like one of those strawman versions of socialism. I’m sure different conceptions of socialism handle these problems differently, for the record, but I don’t know how to learn something without engaging with it critically to the best of my ability! I’m really not trying to make any negative assumptions here. Doesn’t democratic control of the economy mean central planning? And doesn’t central planning mean we all need permission from that authority to undertake whatever economic activity we want to do?
I’d like the idea (but I don’t know if it’s somehow inconsistent with the overall structure) that we own our own labor, and we’re free to do small-scale “mutual aid”-type activities without much government involvement; but once something gets big enough democratic control takes over. I’m sure there’s a lot of specifics to be solved with that idea, but at least at first glance it feels workable to me.
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On February 23 2023 14:11 ChristianS wrote:I mean, it applies to all economic activity! It’s pretty normal for people to have aspirations of what they want to do with their life, right? Maybe someone wants to cook meals for their community! Or maybe they want to fix people’s plumbing for them. Or hell, maybe they just want to program software (a video game maybe?) for other people to use. It’s normal and good for people to imagine ways they could be useful to their community, and to try to make that happen, isn’t it? + Show Spoiler +I suppose one answer could be that we don’t own our labor, either; we do the work the government tells us to, and if we have an idea we should submit it to the relevant planning authority. But that sounds more like one of those strawman versions of socialism. I’m sure different conceptions of socialism handle these problems differently, for the record, but I don’t know how to learn something without engaging with it critically to the best of my ability! I’m really not trying to make any negative assumptions here. Doesn’t democratic control of the economy mean central planning? And doesn’t central planning mean we all need permission from that authority to undertake whatever economic activity we want to do? I’d like the idea (but I don’t know if it’s somehow inconsistent with the overall structure) that we own our own labor, and we’re free to do small-scale “mutual aid”-type activities without much government involvement; but once something gets big enough democratic control takes over. I’m sure there’s a lot of specifics to be solved with that idea, but at least at first glance it feels workable to me.
You do understand the problems with the formation of the question about your farm though? That this new question about people's asperations of what to do with their life and various potential types of work is something different?
Yes, people imagining ways they could be useful to their community and trying to make it happen sounds desirable to me.
It's tough to communicate on the rest because I'm not sure what you're trying to say. But yeah, the last paragraph sounds about like socialism?
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Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control.
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On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control.
That's helpful, thank you.
I don't think "central planning" is quite as ominous as you do, but that's probably because we're imagining different things.
First it's hard to say exactly how a given socialist society would choose to deal with a "somebody wakes up and decides they want to plant a field in/for their community" situation but I don't think many would consider it something that has to be individually approved at a national central planning committee.
Now I do think communities would probably not just want anyone with a wild hair up their butt and some magic beans to be free to try their luck at ripping up a field and getting themselves a golden goose. So there would be a process of some sort I imagine. I would imagine it would range in formality and approval level based on the scale and scope.
EDIT: I think one problem might be that I thought you were using "central planning" in a non-technical sense (as in some form of national planning would exist) and I resonate with a socialist framework of a "decentralized planned economy".
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On February 23 2023 16:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. That's helpful, thank you. I don't think "central planning" is quite as ominous as you do, but that's probably because we're imagining different things. First it's hard to say exactly how a given socialist society would choose to deal with a "somebody wakes up and decides they want to plant a field in/for their community" situation but I don't think many would consider it something that has to be individually approved at a national central planning committee. Now I do think communities would probably not just want anyone with a wild hair up their butt and some magic beans to be free to try their luck at ripping up a field and getting themselves a golden goose. So there would be a process of some sort I imagine. I would imagine it would range in formality and approval level based on the scale and scope. EDIT: I think one problem might be that I thought you were using "central planning" in a non-technical sense (as in some form of national planning would exist) and I resonate with a socialist framework of a "decentralized planned economy".
Unfortunately, a planned economy, centralized or not, will never work, as it is not flexible enough. If something fails miserably, the whole country will be in trouble for a risk private capital is better suited to take on.
Globalisation makes this even worse, you would have to plan imports and exports as well, and the economy of different countries is to knit together for any central planning to be possible.
On top of that, there will always be a market and different values for products and services. There is no way to "plan" yourself away from that.
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On February 23 2023 00:28 JimmiC wrote:
Honestly not trolling, but what I'm going to say next will likely seem like it is.
Maybe socialism could work well if instead of run by people or a person if it was run by ambivalent AI. Obviously huge risks that anyone who has watched movies has seen over and over. But an actual fair AI could make these types of decisions on what is "fair" without being corrupted by self interest and interest in their loved ones.
I would be much more interested in how humans could make it work, but so far we have done a piss poor job and no one seems willing to to produce a fix or even acknowledged the very real problems that exist in existing communist countries. Most of them lend themselves better to the horseshoe theory of politics than the idealized idea of socialism.
I've heard opinions like this before but I always wonder how useful it is. At this point AIs are nowhere close to being that powerful and I question if AI ever will be considering the amount of data the AI would have to process is ever-increasing as well. Even if it turns out to work, at that point in time AI will outperform humans in most tasks anyway and the world will be so unimaginably different that I doubt the current concepts of socialism and capitalism are in any way useful.
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On February 23 2023 18:14 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 16:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. That's helpful, thank you. I don't think "central planning" is quite as ominous as you do, but that's probably because we're imagining different things. First it's hard to say exactly how a given socialist society would choose to deal with a "somebody wakes up and decides they want to plant a field in/for their community" situation but I don't think many would consider it something that has to be individually approved at a national central planning committee. Now I do think communities would probably not just want anyone with a wild hair up their butt and some magic beans to be free to try their luck at ripping up a field and getting themselves a golden goose. So there would be a process of some sort I imagine. I would imagine it would range in formality and approval level based on the scale and scope. EDIT: I think one problem might be that I thought you were using "central planning" in a non-technical sense (as in some form of national planning would exist) and I resonate with a socialist framework of a "decentralized planned economy". Unfortunately, a planned economy, centralized or not, will never work, as it is not flexible enough. If something fails miserably, the whole country will be in trouble for a risk private capital is better suited to take on. Globalisation makes this even worse, you would have to plan imports and exports as well, and the economy of different countries is to knit together for any central planning to be possible. On top of that, there will always be a market and different values for products and services. There is no way to "plan" yourself away from that.
So what you're saying, if I'm reading correctly, is that socialism and communism are really only viable in a self-contained world where they are not dependent on external trading partners? Otherwise a free market economy vis a vis capitalism is the best solution for a globally connected society?
Otherwise, as you mentioned, you're going to have to pay a premium to convert your method of economy to the world and it doesn't result in anything beneficial or tangible for said commune/socialist society.
So a trade-off is to have national resources and interests/commodities out of the private sector and nationalized then followed by a more concentrated/focused group of the above?
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On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control.
But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn!
Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change.
That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s)
In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want.
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“Central planning” of an economy certainly can (and probably always has) involved different offices with different scales of jurisdiction. You talk to the local office if you want some land for farming, but, idk, iron production or something is probably controlled nationally. And it’s probably looked different in different places, historically. Old-fashioned guild-based systems might be considered “decentralized planned economies” in some sense; there wasn’t one group in direct control of everything, but the guilds had official power over a particular type of economic activity and ho boy, you better not try to do that kind of economic activity without talking to the guild first.
Then there’s the Soviets. Unfortunately I just don’t know that much about the history here, and what I have picked up was certainly from pretty anti-socialist sources. But, uh, I think if we looked into Soviet central planning we’d find a lot we’d like to improve on, to put it lightly. Big man in charge (who’s aspiring to higher office) announces a Five Year Plan to increase production to specific targets by specific dates; everybody scrambles to hit the targets because they’re scared of getting yelled at, but by year two or three the targets aren’t actually achievable (big man probably has his promotion by then, anyway), the plan gets scrapped, and a new big man starts the cycle again.
That’s actually pretty recognizable from some of my experience in corporate America. Corporate sends some new executive to “turn the business around” but he has no idea what we actually do. So he holds a town hall meeting, announcing our bright future and setting escalating revenue targets month by month. We scramble to meet them for a bit, often by finding a way to smuggle next month’s revenue into this month’s books, and for a little while the town hall meetings are cheery, but eventually we slip a target and our dear leader yells at us because we didn’t keep it up long enough for him to get promoted.
I’m more confident in the analogy because I actually had a coworker in one job who grew up in Soviet Russia and often commented on how similar it felt (the town hall meetings, but also all the motivational posters and announcements from corporate). It cuts both ways, right? On the one hand I don’t believe these problems are peculiar to centrally planned economies; on the other, I don’t believe that removing the profit motive removes some of the more toxic tendencies of hierarchical work organizations.
Edit: hadn’t seen the post by Acro when I wrote this.
Edit2: @Acro: Yeah, it complicates the analysis that the US often does what amounts to a convoluted central planning system. If you analyze a sector of the economy, decide what you want to happen, and set regulations and subsidies to guarantee that will happen, it’s just central planning, but potentially with weird loopholes that will get a few people extremely rich because they gamed your system.
I’ll also say: I know that “Soviets fucked up Russian agriculture with collectivization” is kind of famous, but I actually don’t know the history there. I’m not doubting the conventional wisdom on it, I just feel like I missed a day in history class everybody else got. Maybe this thread isn’t the place for an explanation of Soviet agricultural history, but since you made a joking reference to it, I figured I’d confess my ignorance.
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On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want.
I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones.
Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it.
It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution.
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On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution.
The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy!
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On February 24 2023 01:03 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution. The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy!
The US can do social democracy as long as it's racist and sexist (a bit of a misnomer I know).
I don't expect most Republicans to ever be supportive of a socialist revolution. But I also don't think social democracy is impossible. Social democracy arises as basically a compromise spurred by the looming threat of full-on revolution. So even if people's idea is to make the US a social democracy, that only comes if there's a palpable threat of revolution.
Basically if you want social democracy in the US it's only happening by betraying a socialist revolution to compromise with the capitalists.
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On February 24 2023 01:14 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2023 01:03 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution. The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy! The US can do social democracy as long as it's racist and sexist (a bit of a misnomer I know). I don't expect most Republicans to ever be supportive of a socialist revolution. But I also don't think social democracy is impossible. Social democracy arises as basically a compromise spurred by the looming threat of full-on revolution. So even if people's idea is to make the US a social democracy, that only comes if there's a palpable threat of revolution. Basically if you want social democracy in the US it's only happening by betraying a socialist revolution to compromise with the capitalists.
Republicans are roughly 50% of the voting population. It's slightly lower but not lower enough to really quibble. The turnout in % of VAP over the last 5 elections (averaged over wikipedia's numbers) is ~57%. We can consider that if the other 43% is too disillusioned/lazy/busy to vote, it is not going to participate in a revolution. That means you have 50% of 57%, or 29% of the population (rough estimate of voters who are not republicans) to work with.
The most interesting study I found about what % of people you need to achieve radical change is this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/
So, assuming that is the threshold to reach, you'd have to have 25%/29%, or roughly 85% of all non-Republican politically engaged people on-board for the socialist revolution to have a chance of working. I bolded the revolution part, because they need to not only be on-board with "talking points" but with actually breaking down the current system to build a socialist one in its place. By giving up on republicans, you're also conceding that "red" states will have nowhere near the population needed for such a revolution when states (or even lone cities) such as New York or California are starting to revolt. You'd probably end up with a second civil war (or maybe the far better solution: the dissolution of the USA into the Socialist Republics of New England and the Pacific, and the Confederate Republic of Amuhrica, made up of Florida, Texas, the midwest and some other stuff).
I understand your conviction that fighting for a Socialist Revolution is the only way to convince people they need to change, but wouldn't meeting the capitalists halfway with a New New Deal, and then keep pushing things slightly further left over time, be a better solution than attempting to push straight for a Socialist Revolution Or Bust approach? Because best-case scenario of the socialist revolution: you got it done, and managed to avoid civil war by having the western states secede and found the Socialist Pacific Republic. This would still be an insane socio-political upheaval that throws the country, and probably world, into a turmoil that will last decades. Not to metion, China will gladly jump into that power vacuum... and China is not your socialist comrade anymore (assuming Maoist policy was socialist rather than just totalitarian). Doesn't this basically mean you have squandered your "privileged" (although I understand you don't feel privileged as an African American) position in the world, and now China will simply swoop in and exploit the global south, instead of "the west" doing that?
Let me put it this way: which mid/long-term goals do you think can be solved better by convincing 25% of the US to revolt than by convincing ~15% (the majority of the democratic party base) to be actually progressive, given that progression can start the second you convince the people (and fewer of them, at that), and the revolution will start with at least a decade of (global) turmoil.
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On February 24 2023 03:38 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2023 01:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 24 2023 01:03 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution. The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy! The US can do social democracy as long as it's racist and sexist (a bit of a misnomer I know). I don't expect most Republicans to ever be supportive of a socialist revolution. But I also don't think social democracy is impossible. Social democracy arises as basically a compromise spurred by the looming threat of full-on revolution. So even if people's idea is to make the US a social democracy, that only comes if there's a palpable threat of revolution. Basically if you want social democracy in the US it's only happening by betraying a socialist revolution to compromise with the capitalists. Republicans are roughly 50% of the voting population. It's slightly lower but not lower enough to really quibble. The turnout in % of VAP over the last 5 elections (averaged over wikipedia's numbers) is ~57%. We can consider that if the other 43% is too disillusioned/lazy/busy to vote, it is not going to participate in a revolution. That means you have 50% of 57%, or 29% of the population (rough estimate of voters who are not republicans) to work with. The most interesting study I found about what % of people you need to achieve radical change is this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/So, assuming that is the threshold to reach, you'd have to have 25%/29%, or roughly 85% of all non-Republican politically engaged people on-board for the socialist revolution to have a chance of working. I bolded the revolution part, because they need to not only be on-board with "talking points" but with actually breaking down the current system to build a socialist one in its place. + Show Spoiler + By giving up on republicans, you're also conceding that "red" states will have nowhere near the population needed for such a revolution when states (or even lone cities) such as New York or California are starting to revolt. You'd probably end up with a second civil war (or maybe the far better solution: the dissolution of the USA into the Socialist Republics of New England and the Pacific, and the Confederate Republic of Amuhrica, made up of Florida, Texas, the midwest and some other stuff).
I understand your conviction that fighting for a Socialist Revolution is the only way to convince people they need to change, but wouldn't meeting the capitalists halfway with a New New Deal, and then keep pushing things slightly further left over time, be a better solution than attempting to push straight for a Socialist Revolution Or Bust approach? Because best-case scenario of the socialist revolution: you got it done, and managed to avoid civil war by having the western states secede and found the Socialist Pacific Republic. This would still be an insane socio-political upheaval that throws the country, and probably world, into a turmoil that will last decades. Not to metion, China will gladly jump into that power vacuum... and China is not your socialist comrade anymore (assuming Maoist policy was socialist rather than just totalitarian). Doesn't this basically mean you have squandered your "privileged" (although I understand you don't feel privileged as an African American) position in the world, and now China will simply swoop in and exploit the global south, instead of "the west" doing that? Let me put it this way: which mid/long-term goals do you think can be solved better by convincing 25% of the US to revolt than by convincing ~15% (the majority of the democratic party base) to be actually progressive, given that progression can start the second you convince the people (and fewer of them, at that), and the revolution will start with at least a decade of (global) turmoil.
I don't want to quibble over the margins on the numbers but I do have to say I don't write-off the ~43% of the VAP that don't consistently engage with the US political system or people too young to vote as not potentially being supportive.
An interesting statistic (I suspect you might have come across in formulating that post) about socialism. 55% of women between 18 and 54 would prefer to live in a socialist country than a capitalist country. It's just one data point, but it certainly indicates there might be more support for living in a socialist US than we're often led to believe by capitalist propaganda.
What you're essentially asking about are commonly referred to as "non-reformist reforms" which is something I support. Now there are different interpretations about what exactly that means (the wiki is an okay place to start if this is a foreign concept), but the general consensus is around non-reformist reforms being antagonistic to capitalism rather than subsumed by it.
While "convincing people to be progressive" and "convincing 25% of the US to revolt" sound similar there's the important distinction + Show Spoiler +(besides not necessarily agreeing with some connotations of "revolt")
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On February 24 2023 05:10 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2023 04:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 24 2023 03:38 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 01:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 24 2023 01:03 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution. The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy! The US can do social democracy as long as it's racist and sexist (a bit of a misnomer I know). I don't expect most Republicans to ever be supportive of a socialist revolution. But I also don't think social democracy is impossible. Social democracy arises as basically a compromise spurred by the looming threat of full-on revolution. So even if people's idea is to make the US a social democracy, that only comes if there's a palpable threat of revolution. Basically if you want social democracy in the US it's only happening by betraying a socialist revolution to compromise with the capitalists. Republicans are roughly 50% of the voting population. It's slightly lower but not lower enough to really quibble. The turnout in % of VAP over the last 5 elections (averaged over wikipedia's numbers) is ~57%. We can consider that if the other 43% is too disillusioned/lazy/busy to vote, it is not going to participate in a revolution. That means you have 50% of 57%, or 29% of the population (rough estimate of voters who are not republicans) to work with. The most interesting study I found about what % of people you need to achieve radical change is this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/So, assuming that is the threshold to reach, you'd have to have 25%/29%, or roughly 85% of all non-Republican politically engaged people on-board for the socialist revolution to have a chance of working. I bolded the revolution part, because they need to not only be on-board with "talking points" but with actually breaking down the current system to build a socialist one in its place. + Show Spoiler + By giving up on republicans, you're also conceding that "red" states will have nowhere near the population needed for such a revolution when states (or even lone cities) such as New York or California are starting to revolt. You'd probably end up with a second civil war (or maybe the far better solution: the dissolution of the USA into the Socialist Republics of New England and the Pacific, and the Confederate Republic of Amuhrica, made up of Florida, Texas, the midwest and some other stuff).
I understand your conviction that fighting for a Socialist Revolution is the only way to convince people they need to change, but wouldn't meeting the capitalists halfway with a New New Deal, and then keep pushing things slightly further left over time, be a better solution than attempting to push straight for a Socialist Revolution Or Bust approach? Because best-case scenario of the socialist revolution: you got it done, and managed to avoid civil war by having the western states secede and found the Socialist Pacific Republic. This would still be an insane socio-political upheaval that throws the country, and probably world, into a turmoil that will last decades. Not to metion, China will gladly jump into that power vacuum... and China is not your socialist comrade anymore (assuming Maoist policy was socialist rather than just totalitarian). Doesn't this basically mean you have squandered your "privileged" (although I understand you don't feel privileged as an African American) position in the world, and now China will simply swoop in and exploit the global south, instead of "the west" doing that? Let me put it this way: which mid/long-term goals do you think can be solved better by convincing 25% of the US to revolt than by convincing ~15% (the majority of the democratic party base) to be actually progressive, given that progression can start the second you convince the people (and fewer of them, at that), and the revolution will start with at least a decade of (global) turmoil. I don't want to quibble over the margins on the numbers but I do have to say I don't write-off the ~43% of the VAP that don't consistently engage with the US political system or people too young to vote as not potentially being supportive. An interesting statistic (I suspect you might have come across in formulating that post) about socialism. 55% of women between 18 and 54 would prefer to live in a socialist country than a capitalist country. It's just one data point, but it certainly indicates there might be more support for living in a socialist US than we're often led to believe by capitalist propaganda. What you're essentially asking about are commonly referred to as "non-reformist reforms" which is something I support. Now there are different interpretations about what exactly that means ( the wiki is an okay place to start if this is a foreign concept), but the general consensus is around non-reformist reforms being antagonistic to capitalism rather than subsumed by it. While "convincing people to be progressive" and "convincing 25% of the US to revolt" sound similar there's the important distinction + Show Spoiler +(besides not necessarily agreeing with some connotations of "revolt") about reformism vs non-reformist reforms. Do you think those 55% think of a communist country or do you think they are talking about social democratic country?
You could click through to the link and see for yourself. The answer: it allowed every respondent to make up their own mind. It thus polled more of a "trend". Some people no doubt answered no, because they still associate socialism with Soviet Russia, while others voted yes, because they think of Sweden, and yet others voted yes, because they want to live in an actual Socialist State in the US that has never existed but they hope will some day...
It also polled what people thought that meant, and it's somewhat interesting, but the analysis doesn't go into enough depth. Why not look at what people who want socialism associate (and thus presumably like about the idea) and what people who don't want socialism associate with it. While the answers are probably predictable, there might be some surprises there. Either way, the methodology was an online poll with an uncontrolled sample, so don't put too much stock into its representative power. It's still an interesting measurement.
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On February 24 2023 05:24 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2023 05:10 JimmiC wrote:On February 24 2023 04:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 24 2023 03:38 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 01:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 24 2023 01:03 Acrofales wrote:On February 24 2023 00:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 23:27 Acrofales wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. But that happens already. The vast majority of crops aren't grown because the farmer said "oh, you know what? I'd really want to grow a monoculture of corn!" but rather, the government says "we will give this subsidy and this extra benefit for every bushel of corn grown". Farmers run the numbers and realize that a monoculture of corn, even paying extra for all kinds of fertilizer and irrigation that they might not have needed if they practiced better crop rotations, is the most profitable use of land, so they plough all their fields and plant corn! Sustainable farming practices are currently being actively disencouraged by national and state governments (and this is not just a US thing, the EU is just as culpable), and have been for the last 50 years at least. There have been a variety of reasons for this, but the one persisting right now is lobbying by the agroindustry (which includes farmers themselves) to keep it that way. "Central planning" deciding that farmers need to use sustainable practices on their land, rather than farming it until the land is so degraded you can't grow anything would be good for both the environment and for farmers, but because it isn't good for farmers' profits (or their industrial suppliers) in the short term, they are seriously opposed to this type of change. That said, I don't think you need a socialist government to fix farming. You can achieve all of this with things like nitrogen taxes. And if that threatens to lead to a food shortage, then give susidies for developing innovative solutions like vertical farms in cities. If you can incentivize farmers to follow bad practices with subsidies and penalties, it stands to reason you can incentivize them to follow good practices as well. Without needing a central government to take over the land and dictate who farms what (which worked fantastically well in Soviet Russia, btw /s) In closing, I don't think central planning is the horror you're making it out to be. But I also don't think it needs to be as complete as "nobody can own land anymore" to get the results we want. I agree with all that except in the context of US politics. Also that it is sustainable (and the owning land part). It seems pretty consistent that capitalist always chip away at it because the "social" part is basically antithetical to the capitalist part. Without an alternative to capitalism you're just counting down the days until the capitalists concentrate wealth and use it to undermine social goals in favor of profitable ones. Specifically in the US the cooption of politicians by capital is so entrenched no one actually thinks the US can realistically stop it. It's not that social democracy can't be better than US capitalism, it's that one problem is that in the US it's not so clear it can get from where it is to social democracy. Every so often we revisit this realization (that it can't because of regulatory capture, two-party politics, fptp, and so on) and then put it on the shelf until the next time submission to perpetual government incompetence, inaction, and/or corruption must be rationalized to discourage revolution. The US system today is the same system that gave you Roosevelt's New Deal, so it isn't really the apparatus itself that would make it incapable of moving toward a social democracy, but rather everything surrounding it. And that "everything surrounding it" includes a large portion of the population who are vehemently opposed to anything with the word "social" in it, and are having that reinforced by FOX News. If you say that getting to a social democracy is currently impossible, what makes you think those people will be on board with a full-blown socialist revolution? And if your first step is "well, we need to educate them", why do you not think a social democracy is a far shorter distance away than a socialist revolution? Educating them back to where they'll accept a "New New Deal" seems relatively easy! The US can do social democracy as long as it's racist and sexist (a bit of a misnomer I know). I don't expect most Republicans to ever be supportive of a socialist revolution. But I also don't think social democracy is impossible. Social democracy arises as basically a compromise spurred by the looming threat of full-on revolution. So even if people's idea is to make the US a social democracy, that only comes if there's a palpable threat of revolution. Basically if you want social democracy in the US it's only happening by betraying a socialist revolution to compromise with the capitalists. Republicans are roughly 50% of the voting population. It's slightly lower but not lower enough to really quibble. The turnout in % of VAP over the last 5 elections (averaged over wikipedia's numbers) is ~57%. We can consider that if the other 43% is too disillusioned/lazy/busy to vote, it is not going to participate in a revolution. That means you have 50% of 57%, or 29% of the population (rough estimate of voters who are not republicans) to work with. The most interesting study I found about what % of people you need to achieve radical change is this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/So, assuming that is the threshold to reach, you'd have to have 25%/29%, or roughly 85% of all non-Republican politically engaged people on-board for the socialist revolution to have a chance of working. I bolded the revolution part, because they need to not only be on-board with "talking points" but with actually breaking down the current system to build a socialist one in its place. + Show Spoiler + By giving up on republicans, you're also conceding that "red" states will have nowhere near the population needed for such a revolution when states (or even lone cities) such as New York or California are starting to revolt. You'd probably end up with a second civil war (or maybe the far better solution: the dissolution of the USA into the Socialist Republics of New England and the Pacific, and the Confederate Republic of Amuhrica, made up of Florida, Texas, the midwest and some other stuff).
I understand your conviction that fighting for a Socialist Revolution is the only way to convince people they need to change, but wouldn't meeting the capitalists halfway with a New New Deal, and then keep pushing things slightly further left over time, be a better solution than attempting to push straight for a Socialist Revolution Or Bust approach? Because best-case scenario of the socialist revolution: you got it done, and managed to avoid civil war by having the western states secede and found the Socialist Pacific Republic. This would still be an insane socio-political upheaval that throws the country, and probably world, into a turmoil that will last decades. Not to metion, China will gladly jump into that power vacuum... and China is not your socialist comrade anymore (assuming Maoist policy was socialist rather than just totalitarian). Doesn't this basically mean you have squandered your "privileged" (although I understand you don't feel privileged as an African American) position in the world, and now China will simply swoop in and exploit the global south, instead of "the west" doing that? Let me put it this way: which mid/long-term goals do you think can be solved better by convincing 25% of the US to revolt than by convincing ~15% (the majority of the democratic party base) to be actually progressive, given that progression can start the second you convince the people (and fewer of them, at that), and the revolution will start with at least a decade of (global) turmoil. I don't want to quibble over the margins on the numbers but I do have to say I don't write-off the ~43% of the VAP that don't consistently engage with the US political system or people too young to vote as not potentially being supportive. An interesting statistic (I suspect you might have come across in formulating that post) about socialism. 55% of women between 18 and 54 would prefer to live in a socialist country than a capitalist country. It's just one data point, but it certainly indicates there might be more support for living in a socialist US than we're often led to believe by capitalist propaganda. What you're essentially asking about are commonly referred to as "non-reformist reforms" which is something I support. Now there are different interpretations about what exactly that means ( the wiki is an okay place to start if this is a foreign concept), but the general consensus is around non-reformist reforms being antagonistic to capitalism rather than subsumed by it. While "convincing people to be progressive" and "convincing 25% of the US to revolt" sound similar there's the important distinction + Show Spoiler +(besides not necessarily agreeing with some connotations of "revolt") about reformism vs non-reformist reforms. Do you think those 55% think of a communist country or do you think they are talking about social democratic country? You could click through to the link and see for yourself. The answer: it allowed every respondent to make up their own mind. It thus polled more of a "trend". Some people no doubt answered no, because they still associate socialism with Soviet Russia, while others voted yes, because they think of Sweden, and yet others voted yes, because they want to live in an actual Socialist State in the US that has never existed but they hope will some day... It also polled what people thought that meant, and it's somewhat interesting, but the analysis doesn't go into enough depth. Why not look at what people who want socialism associate (and thus presumably like about the idea) and what people who don't want socialism associate with it. While the answers are probably predictable, there might be some surprises there. Either way, the methodology was an online poll with an uncontrolled sample, so don't put too much stock into its representative power. It's still an interesting measurement.
It would have certainly been a poll worth formalizing/improving for tracking. You think the results might have discouraged pollsters (or rather their funding) from following up on it? The non-reformist reforms was the important part to take out of that post though, so I hope that was clear?
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On February 23 2023 22:52 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 18:14 Slydie wrote:On February 23 2023 16:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 23 2023 15:29 ChristianS wrote:
Yes, I understand that “my farm” implies a type of land ownership that would presumably be eliminated, but I don’t care about the ownership. Put it this way: one of the biggest problems I have with the day-to-day of capitalism in America is that it makes it so hard for people to just *do good things for each other.* “Work” Is compartmentalized into this contractual thing you do 40+ hours a week that you or someone else in your organization has to connect back to profit somehow; everything else is “leisure.” The theory is that whatever you could do that’s most profitable is the best way you could help society, but nobody really believes that. If the average person were to compose a list of “top ways I could make money” and “top ways I could help society,” the lists probably wouldn’t overlap all that much.
So I love the idea of removing revenue capture as a requirement for doing something. I’m just worried that a centrally planned economy will introduce at least as much of a barrier in the bureaucracy and politics of obtaining permission from that authority. Maybe nobody “owns” land, but the US is far from running out of arable land. If someone wants to grow a crop for themselves and their community, do they need permission from the government? I can’t help but imagine going to some socialist equivalent of the DMV and filling out Form 412B - Land Use Request Form (Agricultural). Or maybe you have to fill out an application to join the Farmers Association, but they’ll presumably have some kind of command structure and you’ll grow whatever they tell you to grow.
Stuff like this is why people chafe at the idea of central planning, which is why I’m wondering if it’s a necessary component. Maybe non-centrally-planned mutual aid-type activity has a place here, but that seems in direct conflict with the idea of economic activity being under democratic control. That's helpful, thank you. I don't think "central planning" is quite as ominous as you do, but that's probably because we're imagining different things. First it's hard to say exactly how a given socialist society would choose to deal with a "somebody wakes up and decides they want to plant a field in/for their community" situation but I don't think many would consider it something that has to be individually approved at a national central planning committee. Now I do think communities would probably not just want anyone with a wild hair up their butt and some magic beans to be free to try their luck at ripping up a field and getting themselves a golden goose. So there would be a process of some sort I imagine. I would imagine it would range in formality and approval level based on the scale and scope. EDIT: I think one problem might be that I thought you were using "central planning" in a non-technical sense (as in some form of national planning would exist) and I resonate with a socialist framework of a "decentralized planned economy". Unfortunately, a planned economy, centralized or not, will never work, as it is not flexible enough. If something fails miserably, the whole country will be in trouble for a risk private capital is better suited to take on. Globalisation makes this even worse, you would have to plan imports and exports as well, and the economy of different countries is to knit together for any central planning to be possible. On top of that, there will always be a market and different values for products and services. There is no way to "plan" yourself away from that. So what you're saying, if I'm reading correctly, is that socialism and communism are really only viable in a self-contained world where they are not dependent on external trading partners? Otherwise a free market economy vis a vis capitalism is the best solution for a globally connected society? Otherwise, as you mentioned, you're going to have to pay a premium to convert your method of economy to the world and it doesn't result in anything beneficial or tangible for said commune/socialist society. So a trade-off is to have national resources and interests/commodities out of the private sector and nationalized then followed by a more concentrated/focused group of the above?
Pretty much, yes.
I don't even think a debate about any form of plan economy and communism is interesting. It was tried and failed in spectacular fashion. China is communist in name only now, you need billions behind you to get anywhere in the Communist party.
How the market economy should be regulated, tax levels, how to keep money out of politics and which sectors are better suited for private or public companies is better to discuss imo.
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EPT
