Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

[Powers]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... r-BB1itgEC

Are We Transitioning From Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

Feudalism but without nobility.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

This all started with Margaret Thatcher, who privatised our water in 1989.

Whenever a UK public service is privatised, you can pretty much guarantee it will turn to shit, at some point further down the line. See also trains, etc. and I'm sure it will happen with our NHS, eventually.

[caltrek]

A common tactic used to discredit socialism is to apply metrics that were developed by and for capitalist society. This puts a premium on internalized profit and an increasing volume of monetary exchange. Missing the point that today's green forms of socialism place more emphasis on sustainability and minimization of external diseconomies.

This was brough home to me by this citation of Hugo Chavez:

Hugo Chavez insisted in the state of Zulia: “if there is no method which can show me truly truly that they are not going to destroy the forest or contaminate the environment of those peoples, if you can’t show me, then that coal stays in the ground, we won’t take it out, it will stay underground. He went on: “I say this as a fact, but a fact which also marks a line and a concept, which every day should be more of a reality, which should concretize itself in the model for the construction of socialism.” For more on this subject, see: http://ecosocialisthorizons.com/2014/10 ... evolution

[caltrek]

Now, according to capitalist measurement, this (see above post) presents a very bad outcome. No coal reaches the market from the site in question. No internalized profits result. Yet from a socialist perspective, the outcome is not so bad. Externalized diseconomies are avoided, and more sustainable sources of energy are encouraged. For socialists, the fact that capitalist forms of measurement show a bad result are very much beside the point. After all, external diseconomies generate demand in the form of an increased need for medical care, efforts to restore the environment, etc.

All this makes it very difficult to argue against a defender of capitalism. Their frame of reference biases their argument. A kind of circular logic develops. We need to break into that circle to move forward as a species.

Source of Chavez citation in previous post: https://www.cnsjournal.org/venezuela-20 ... evolution

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Cooperatives
by caltrek

Experiments in cooperative production go at least as far back as the 18ty century(1). In the 19th century Robert Owen attempted to start up several cooperatives but ultimately failed(2). This resulted in Karl Marx dismissing such efforts as "utopian" and doomed to failure in the absence of some very basic structural reforms in the economy. Whether it is because such structural reforms have been made, or because Marx was too pessimistic, some subsequent attempts have been proven successful(3).

An interesting aspect of such voluntary cooperatives is that many libertarians are willing to see them be established and to grow without being labeled as contrary to the libertarian philosophy. Points of dispute only arise over the extent to which government programs should encourage their development. I suspect that many in the cooperative movement are also anxious about too great a dependence upon government support. Such support can result in opening themselves up to the negative effects of sudden shifts in government policy.

A point made by the International Centre for Cooperative Management:

Cooperatives are prone to incongruent isomorphism due to a lack of understanding of their
nature, regulatory pressures, competitive pressures on cooperative leadership, and other factors.
Education of cooperative decisionmakers-managers, directors, and members - is extremely
important in order to secure benefits of cooperative value chains. Besides education, regulatory
frameworks that protect the model are desirable, particularly regarding the asset lock and
mandatory indivisible reserves, supported by beneficial tax laws and other instruments(4).

Sources

(1) & (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... _movement[

(3) & (4) https://social.desa.un.org/sites/defaul ... r.rev_.pdf

[firestar464]

Libertarianism x Socialism Crossover??????? OMG /lh