Awesome presentation on capitalism and socialism

[wufwugy]

Short, from Oxford

[Savy]

Nope not at all. That's why there are numerous thriving socialist societies.

[wufwugy]

Nope not at all. That's why there are numerous thriving socialist societies.

Nope. There aren't. A big fat zero.

Maybe you're thinking of Denmark or Sweden. Both highly capitalist. Maybe you're thinking of China, whose thriving economy is only as thriving as how far in capitalist reforms it has gone

[a500lbgorilla]

Bro, America's been Socialist for about 6 years now. Turn on the news once in a while.

[Renton]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable..._broken_window

Standard seen vs unseen. The core tenets of socialism do not work. Any society that has socialist elements is going to distribute resources in a less efficient way than if those elements were removed. The semi-socialist society can still "thrive" in absolute terms, but the unseen is that it might thrive far more if it were a more capitalist system.

The United States is a thriving economy for the most part, but if it weren't for farm subsidies it would be better, without a doubt. It could actually be measured how much the GDP would increase if those subsidies were removed.

[wufwugy]

Something as simple as zoning deregulation would boost GDP tremendously, boost living standards, and even likely eliminate homelessness.

[Savy]

Nope. There aren't. A big fat zero.

Maybe you're thinking of Denmark or Sweden. Both highly capitalist. Maybe you're thinking of China, whose thriving economy is only as thriving as how far in capitalist reforms it has gone

You keep living in the money makes people happy and that's all that matters realm. You'll go far. Meaning it'll have no effect on your life but you seem to be happy doing what you do. FIGHT THE POWER.

btw guy you linked is an absolute ass

[wufwugy]

You keep living in the money makes people happy and that's all that matters realm.

No I don't. The fact that you think that shows that you're not paying attention to a side of the argument.

btw guy you linked is an absolute ass

Why?

[d0zer]

Why?

leading with godwin's never helps...

[wufwugy]

leading with godwin's never helps...

He didn't lead with Godwin's, and even if he did, he acknowledged it and it served a specific purpose. I'm not sure how you knock somebody for being straight up. We're supposed to be adults. It's hyper childish to not be able to talk about hard things

If you're confused on why I say "he didn't lead with Godwin's", it's because Godwin's is an observation of what happens in discussions. It says: the longer a discussion goes on, the more likely Hitler is to be mentioned. Using Hitler or Nazis in an argument is not Godwin, but that doesn't stop everybody from thinking it is. Godwin himself said it's a satirical observation about the internet, and if you were to try to be serious about it statistically, you can replace "Hitler" with any other thing, and it would still be accurate, because the law is basically "the longer something happens, the more likely something else is to happen".

[wufwugy]

Maybe it seems like I'm being too technical, but that's my response to stupid Godwin's. It's a worthless observation, and people routinely throw away the opportunity to learn just so they can act like they're offended

[d0zer]

It's soooooooooo cliche tho

[surviva316]

I'm a bit disappointed. I thought this was going to be an awesome, eye-opening talk that would give me loads of material to wrestle with for weeks to come. Instead, the video can be responded to in pretty sure order, as follows:

Coercion

Any property law is coercion. To use a crude analogy, capitalism throws a toy between Timmy and Johnny and says, “That toy belongs to Johnny,so if Timmy touches it, I'm going to spank him,” and socialism says, “That toy doesn't belong to either of you, so if either of you act like it's yours-yours-all-yours, then you're going to get spanked.” Making it sound like either involves a freedom beyond social contract would be misleading. ANY society with a governing body that has any opinion whatsoever on who uses what when involves compulsion (even a supposedly “lasse faire” one; markets themselves are free, but property law of everything from hard property to debt and investments to friggin' thoughts and ideas come with an insane amount of restrictions that everyone has to play by).But even in an extreme form of anarchy (where there aren't even micro-social-structures) one might argue that there's an implicit coercion created by a society that doesn't “protect” freedoms.


His argument is potentially useful insofar as it tears down some idealist view that it's all roses and flowers and sharing is caring and all that, but that's a pretty goddamned limited “insofar as.” In Other words, he is correct to shoot down any sort of highfalutin rhetoric socialists tout, but to argue that socialism, specifically, is coercive heavily implies that socialism is especially coercive, which means his argument has done at least as much harm as good. It's not very difficult to include qualifiers like, “Of course, there's just as much coercion in capitalism, but this point goes to show that the socialist ideal is fundamentally flawed.”



“Capitalism harnesses energy to a social, usable end ... ”

His illustration of capitalism being a reward and punishment system for social utility and other systems being nothing but cronyism is at its very very best simplistic. Look, capitalism is very good at filling gaps in markets, so in these categories, it is excellent at driving innovation. Every monetizable idea will be created the fastest in capitalism, and a lot of monetizable ideas are helpful to society.How this logic somehow got turned into some sort of fundamental understanding of capitalism as an engine driving social utility is …just … what the fuck humans? Get your shit together.

(LivingSocial figured out how to more effectively connect consumers and producers in the IT age, and everyone ended up better off for it ...especially Groupon :P . While Amazon's initial innovation was an incredible boon for society, they now focus their efforts on figuring out how to be the only channel of distribution for pretty much motherfucking everything, and mostly just the shareholders of Amazon are better off for it.)

I think everyone who lives in a capitalist society will easily relate to the idea that there are the things you do to make money so that you can eat and live in a safe neighborhood, and then there is everything else you do with your life. The things people do at work is just about always of SOME value (and sometimes even very important), but the vast majority of the things that the vast majority of people can do with their lives that is of any value is done, literally, pro-bono, and thus doing things for the greater good is more-often-than-not discouraged by capitalism. Time is money and so people are very-close-to-directly-punished by wasting time stopping to help someone change a tire, spending time with their children, cooking homemade dinners, expressing non-sponsor friendly opinions on, creating things of niche interest, etc.


I don't just mean this anecdotally: not all actions that are good for society are monetizable and only monetizable ideas are rewarded in capitalism; this APODEICTICALLY means that capitalism doesn't harness the energy of shit to a social, usable end. The relationship between the two is arbitrary, at best; in the real world time, energy and talents spent making money, and time, energy and talents spent doing good for society are (much more often than not) a conflict of interest in capitalism.


This Isn't to argue that a pure socialist society effectively “harnesses energy to a social, usable end” (anything purely reliant on the public is probably going to be fatty and stuck-in-its-ways and corruptible, though it's also going to be very inclusive [everyone gets to be judged by a jury and everyone has jury duty]) or, indeed,that any other system I have off the top of my head effectively“harnesses energy to a social, usable end”; I would just fuckingtake that phrase out of my economic vocabulary. (See how easy it was to add a qualifier like that to the end of mypoint?)

_____________

From that point on, it just kind of seems to be a lot of hand waving (literally) and hushing dissenters (literally). I'm not holding these against the guy;I'm just not sure there's a whole lot of substance worth covering.
I'm not really going to commit much to the Godwin's Law argument because I don't care. Godwin's isn't a hard fallacy or even a weak fallacy;it's just a comment on the rhetorical ickiness of comparing bad things to the worst thing to have ever happened. That ickiness applies here (IMHO, the bad part about Hitler wasn't so much that he marched under a red banner as it was that he killed 14 million people based on their race, religion and/or sexuality). But, again, Idon't care that much because it doesn't make anything he says wrong,and especially given his acknowledgement of invoking Godwin's, it doesn't even necessarily make him an ass, but it does mean that, if nothing else, we're wasting perfectly good time that could be spent serving our capitalist overlord--I mean, that could be spent discussing his lecture on arguing about Godwin's.


But clearly, this guy doesn't give two shits—[clears throat and puts on his stern poshness and posh sterniness persona that this guy uses throughout the video] nay, even just one shit!—about dealing in rhetorical ickiness. His reliance on rhetorical devices—I daresay—remind me of a certain Central European monocrat of the mid-19^th century … haha obvi jk.

[surviva316]

Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Internet goblins ate the above post; luckily, I copypastaed it into a word doc, but it got horrifically mangled in the process. I'll try to save it, but forgive me if there are unreadable bits.

[Jack Sawyer]

A 100% capitalistic society is doomed to fail. But so is a 100% socialistic society.

It's all about finding the right balance.

[Renton]

Why is a 100% capitalistic society doomed to fail? I'm sure it would take you dozens of pages to answer so just give me 3 aspects of a 100% capitalistic society that would be aboministic in your mind.

[wufwugy]

I'm a bit disappointed. I thought this was going to be an awesome, eye-opening talk that would give me loads of material to wrestle with for weeks to come.

I feel like when I post things like that, nobody wants to read/watch them. This presentation being simple doesn't make it simplistic, however. One of the biggest mistakes people make (IMO) is not continually reviewing the fundamentals. I've found what I learn is mainly about just developing a stronger understanding of the basics. The video addresses the difference between capitalism and socialism in a clear, concise way.

Coercion

Your bit on coercion is based on a linguistic technicality. You *can* say that coercion includes the act of coercing non-coercion on some technical, semantic level; however, that is conceptually and pragmatically flawed. When we speak of these sorts of things in our world, we already understand them. For example, if somebody assaults you and you fight back, we don't consider what you did coercion. Likewise, when considering the application of a social philosophy, we need to stick to the same rules.

It is accurate to say that forcing yourself onto others is coercion yet forcing others to not force themselves on others is non-coercion.

His illustration of capitalism being a reward and punishment system for social utility and other systems being nothing but cronyism is at its very very best simplistic. Look, capitalism is very good at filling gaps in markets, so in these categories, it is excellent at driving innovation. Every monetizable idea will be created the fastest in capitalism, and a lot of monetizable ideas are helpful to society.How this logic somehow got turned into some sort of fundamental understanding of capitalism as an engine driving social utility is …just … what the fuck humans? Get your shit together.

Yet, that's how it is. We don't have to like it, but it works that way. The only (not one of the only, but exactly only) thing in agricultural civilization that has increased living standards is innovation driven by markets and property. List something from your life, virtually anything, and you'll find that you have it because it and its antecedents have been monetized. A chicken sandwich for $1, a textbook on geography, a fan that keeps you cool, are all examples of what the entire history of humanity did not produce until capital market incentives were created.

(LivingSocial figured out how to more effectively connect consumers and producers in the IT age, and everyone ended up better off for it ...especially Groupon :P . While Amazon's initial innovation was an incredible boon for society, they now focus their efforts on figuring out how to be the only channel of distribution for pretty much motherfucking everything, and mostly just the shareholders of Amazon are better off for it.)

It's a sidetrack, but we're all better off due to Amazon. As with all the innovations, they appear to kill some kinds of incumbencies, but ultimately provide for a more wealthy society, from bottom to top.

I think everyone who lives in a capitalist society will easily relate to the idea that there are the things you do to make money so that you can eat and live in a safe neighborhood, and then there is everything else you do with your life. The things people do at work is just about always of SOME value (and sometimes even very important), but the vast majority of the things that the vast majority of people can do with their lives that is of any value is done, literally, pro-bono, and thus doing things for the greater good is more-often-than-not discouraged by capitalism. Time is money and so people are very-close-to-directly-punished by wasting time stopping to help someone change a tire, spending time with their children, cooking homemade dinners, expressing non-sponsor friendly opinions on, creating things of niche interest, etc.

I disagree in some ways, but it's not really a relevant issue with respects to the capitalism/socialism thing. If socialism was a useful paradigm, what you wrote would still be something you could say.

I don't just mean this anecdotally: not all actions that are good for society are monetizable and only monetizable ideas are rewarded in capitalism; this APODEICTICALLY means that capitalism doesn't harness the energy of shit to a social, usable end. The relationship between the two is arbitrary, at best; in the real world time, energy and talents spent making money, and time, energy and talents spent doing good for society are (much more often than not) a conflict of interest in capitalism.

I addressed some of this early, but can add this: be wary of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Capitalism does have flaws, but that doesn't mean that other options are better. Indeed, all the other options are substantially worse. It's not even close. I think people who think it's close do not know what capitalism is, what the other ideas are, and what history tells us.

[wufwugy]

A 100% capitalistic society is doomed to fail. But so is a 100% socialistic society.

It's all about finding the right balance.

Nobody knows how great a percentage of capitalism a society can have. I'd say there is reason to believe it could be 100% or that it could be close but not quite. Our current society can probably be close to 100%, but there are still some moral issues that aren't a flaw of capitalism but an attribute of human behavior, so capitalism can't be used for them. Healthcare is probably the best example. The reason why free markets do not work for healthcare exclusively is because of emergency care. Humans, as a whole, have decided that we will provide emergency care to those who need it, even if they can't pay. This is the right thing to do because it's moral, but it's also the right thing to do because not doing it would provide all sorts of logistical problems for people who can pay yet may not be able to prove it at the time care is needed.

What this means is that capitalism by itself cannot solve the healthcare issue, so some socialistic form of something is needed (like mandated universal coverage). However, this is a unique scenario. Most things in society do not behave like healthcare, and one day healthcare itself will not behave like it currently does (when technology drops costs by several magnitudes more).

Socialism as a foundation has been proven false. Capitalism as a foundation has been proven true

[d0zer]

capitalism is gay, like marriage.

[a500lbgorilla]

Any society that has socialist elements is going to distribute resources in a less efficient way than if those elements were removed.

Said like a fact, but qualified by *according to our best models. Models built upon the assumption that people act rationally.

People don't seem to act rationally. So I doubt the original fact.

[wufwugy]

Said like a fact, but qualified by *according to our best models. Models built upon the assumption that people act rationally.

People don't seem to act rationally. So I doubt the original fact.

People do act rationally, just not perfectly. Rationality in economics is a little different than how we use it colloquially. Colloquially, we think of it as wisdom, but in economics it isn't necessarily about wisdom, but more about cause and effect and perhaps accountability.

Capitalism indeed allocates capital better than socialism because the decision-making is more consequential

[a500lbgorilla]

People do act rationally, just not perfectly. Rationality in economics is a little different than how we use it colloquially. Colloquially, we think of it as wisdom, but in economics it isn't necessarily about wisdom, but more about cause and effect and perhaps accountability.

Capitalism indeed allocates capital better than socialism because the decision-making is more consequential

Yeah, I just read a fun book that talked about the differences between the Economic Man and, you know, actual people. So I disagree.

I don't mind saying that Cap is better than Socialism. Just recognize what you know and don't know when you're saying it.

Everything in life is a hackjob. Especially where people are concerned. No reason to expect anything different when it comes to whatever form of social structure we manage to build up.

[d0zer]

Everything in life is a hackjob. Especially where people are concerned. No reason to expect anything different when it comes to whatever form of social structure we manage to build up.

This point seems often lost in these discussions where theory reigns king.

[wufwugy]

Economic Man sounds like a misinterpretation of rational behavior. By definition, it assumes perfection, yet economic behavior doesn't. I'm not sure why anybody would use Economic Man for anything other than an abstract model to aid explanation, not be a representation.

Rationality in economics addresses the consequential nature of behavior. It isn't wisdom or objectivity. An example of rational behavior is my browser bookmarks. What they are and their arrangement is caused by and effects into rational decisions I have made regardless of whether they're "right" or "wrong". Capitalism is like that, socialism is like if we all have the bookmarks chosen and arranged based on an external principle not related to cause and effect

I'm not sure if that makes sense. Regardless, in the real world, an "economic man" is somebody whose decisions have some sort of rational and consequential link. This includes everything you can think of, from drug addiction to choice of anti-virus software. The socialist view is to eliminate causal chains

[a500lbgorilla]

I'm pretty sure he wasn't misinterpreting how economists handle rationality. He won a nobel prize in the field.

The book references the rational agent model. Basically, it was shown that anyone who deviates from the correct EV in any decision is hurting themselves. Then it is shown that people deviate from this all the time. Even when they know the strictly correct EV calc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory

The book: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-...+fast+and+slow

Such a tight book.

[d0zer]

Answer me this capitalist swine, how did the commies get a man into space before you?

[wufwugy]

I'm pretty sure he wasn't misinterpreting how economists handle rationality. He won a nobel prize in the field.

The book references the rational agent model. Basically, it was shown that anyone who deviates from the correct EV in any decision is hurting themselves. Then it is shown that people deviate from this all the time. Even when they know the strictly correct EV calc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory

The book: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-...+fast+and+slow

Such a tight book.

With that settled I'm back to my earlier point that just because one thing in flawed doesn't mean a known something else is better, or in this case, it can probably be said that some unregulated environments are inherently problematic, but that doesn't mean that regulating them is any better. A central tenet of free markets is that they simply work better than regulated markets even though free markets aren't perfect. More or less, I agree with that. Where I differ is what I stated earlier about how healthcare is an example of something that humans inherently treat un-free, so then it must be regulated in certain ways. But I also still think that in aggregate, capitalism, regardless of the percentage to which it is adhered, is better than every single other known option. Every system is flawed, even the theoretically plausible best regulated one. And capitalism is better than that still

[wufwugy]

Answer me this capitalist swine, how did the commies get a man into space before you?

Because you can still do things with socialism. You can't defy the ultimate arbiter in supply and demand, but a command economy can accomplish some tasks. Drafting citizens to build and operate war machines is one of them, and retooling that infrastructure to reach outer space isn't that much of a change in course

[Renton]

I challenge any of the socialistly inclined in this thread to come up with one problem caused by free market capitalism that is assuaged by a socialist policy, and what the nature of that policy is. I will respond in turn with how that policy has a net negative effect on the very problem it intends to remedy.

[d0zer]

I challenge any of the socialistly inclined in this thread to come up with one problem caused by free market capitalism that is assuaged by a socialist policy, and what the nature of that policy is. I will respond in turn with how that policy has a net negative effect on the very problem it intends to remedy.

I'm probably not your man then. I support free-market capitalism for the most part, with only a few exceptions, the environment being one of them. The libertarian approach to solve the pollution problem is interesting, but impractical. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that environmental regulation on the free market technically falls under the blanket of socialism.

Laisse-faire capitalism would have allowed leaded-gasoline to continue burning for way longer than it would and should have without government intervention.

[d0zer]

As much as I like to troll libertarians online, at home I have to play the staunch capitalist because wife is fairly left-leaning and hangs around some very anti-capitalism types. The other day she said to me "You know what, pizza is a great example of capitalism working. It's so cheap to order these two mediums because there's so much competition in that market". I nodded in approval.

[Renton]

I'm probably not your man then. I support free-market capitalism for the most part, with only a few exceptions, the environment being one of them. The libertarian approach to solve the pollution problem is interesting, but impractical. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that environmental regulation on the free market technically falls under the blanket of socialism.

Laisse-faire capitalism would have allowed leaded-gasoline to continue burning for way longer than it would and should have without government intervention.

Environmental regulation is not socialism in and of itself. In a completely voluntary society with no state there could easily emerge such regulations on a more local level, especially with empowerment of property owners and a redefinition of what constitutes an aggressive act against another property owner. Polluting someone's groundwater, for example, would be seen as a form of vandalism and one would be liable for damages.

That said, there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that any environmental regulation from the top down has had a large positive effect on pollution. So I'm not sure it works in the context of my challenge because I'm not sure it works anyway. I do have something to say about leaded gasoline though. This is from wikipedia:

Tetraethyllead (common name tetraethyl lead), abbreviated TEL, is anorganolead compound with the formula (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb.
It was mixed with gasoline (petrol) beginning in the 1920s as a patented octanebooster that allowed engine compression to be raised substantially, which in turn increased vehicle performance or fuel economy.^[1][2] Ethanol was already known as a widely available, inexpensive, low toxicity octane booster, but TEL was promoted because it was uniquely profitable to the patent holders.^[3] TEL was phased out starting in the U.S. in the mid-1970s because of its cumulativeneurotoxicity and its damaging effect on catalytic converters. When present in fuel, TEL is also the main cause of spark plug fouling.^[4] TEL is still used as an additive in some grades of aviation gasoline, and in some developing countries.

It looks to me like this product would have been quickly phased out regardless of the prohibition. I'm also highly skeptical of the toxic effect of using this product. Environmentalists are the king of making a mountain out of a molehill, saying that a product is "toxic" because a rat died, failing to understand that chemicals are dangerous based on their level of concentration in the air or water, and that there are few if any inherently toxic chemicals.

[Renton]

As much as I like to troll libertarians online, at home I have to play the staunch capitalist because wife is fairly left-leaning and hangs around some very anti-capitalism types. The other day she said to me "You know what, pizza is a great example of capitalism working. It's so cheap to order these two mediums because there's so much competition in that market". I nodded in approval.

Yeah it drives down the prices of flour, pepperonis, mozzarella cheese, cardboard, and gasoline as well when huge pizza companies in fierce competition are buying these products in massive bulk.

[a500lbgorilla]

The problem of having no money.

And I won't be advocating for socialism. I'll be advocating for a theocracy.

[Renton]

The problem of having no money.

That's an easy one. Social programs contribute to devaluing money and increasing the prices of life supporting goods, exacerbating the problem. It has the nasty side effect of making things seem better by giving people free healthcare or education in the present, but sacking the next generation with an insurmountable debt.

Capitalism drives down the prices of everything so that even poorer people have access to to life supporting goods that would be too expensive for them in a socialist system.

[a500lbgorilla]

Now tackle the problem of having no money.

[wufwugy]

Now tackle the problem of having no money.

It's capitalism, not money-ism. Capital = resources, including potential resources.

So, since everybody has capital, you only have no money if you don't use your capital to acquire or create money.

I think the main fundamental reason why so many people are against capitalism is that they equate it with money. Capital is definitively not money

[Renton]

The best thing you can do for that problem is to give people every means to contribute to society and earn money for that contribution. And for those few (VERY FEW) people who have nothing to contribute, having a free society with growing capital and cheap goods makes it easier for their families or charities to help them out.

[Savy]

Now tackle the problem of having no money.

They die ldo

Which clearly isn't a problem because poor people have too many kids anyway and dilute the gene pool.

The best thing you can do for that problem is to give people every means to contribute to society and earn money for that contribution. And for those few (VERY FEW) people who have nothing to contribute, having a free society with growing capital and cheap goods makes it easier for their families or charities to help them out.

How are charities ever a good thing? I'm not sure why you'd ever invest your own capital for free into a service people should be paying for. That will just drive prices up for everyone else.

[a500lbgorilla]

The best thing you can do for that problem is to give people every means to contribute to society and earn money for that contribution. And for those few (VERY FEW) people who have nothing to contribute, having a free society with growing capital and cheap goods makes it easier for their families or charities to help them out.

Best in my theocratic society would be whatever brings you closest to God. Their poverty makes them the wealthiest among us.

Theocracy 1, Capitalism 0.

[Renton]

There will always be philanthropy and generosity. At least in a society where products are as cheap as possible, that stuff will count for more. People will also be far more likely to give when they don't have to pay 50% or more of their money to the government in taxes.

Yes, it is certainly true that a completely free society will have harsher consequences for coasting through life without a care or a responsibility in the world, but I can't see how this is a bad thing, really. All I know for sure is that the freer and wealthier a society is as a whole, the easier it will be to find good paying work, the lower the prices of everything we use, and the easier all our lives will be, even the poor among us. Removing all of these artificial barriers to wealth gain that states have created beats any social program that anyone could come up with.

[!Luck]

They die ldo

Which clearly isn't a problem because poor people have too many kids anyway and dilute the gene pool.



How are charities ever a good thing? I'm not sure why you'd ever invest your own capital for free into a service people should be paying for. That will just drive prices up for everyone else.

You know, it is possible for rational people to give time/money because the value they receive from giving charity is greater than holding on to money. Capitalism won't destroy these people in some respects the more money i have the easier it is to by moral rightenous with cash, which seems like a great trade to me.

[wufwugy]

Possibly the best explanation of what economics is on a fundamental level



I think when we extend the logic of the Lesson of the Pencil, it implies that the best way to solve problems is by using the price system. It's the best (only) way to make a pencil, and likewise it's the best (only) way to create something new and good that takes over the space of something not as new and not as good

This mechanism is the same thing that explains why foragers and hunter/gatherers started agriculture: it dropped the effective price of calories. No amount of rules or distributions could have shifted us from foraging to modern civilization if the price of a calorie didn't truly drop from planting crops.

I always make the point that this is why the Soviet Union collapsed. It attempted to ignore prices. It, like all socialism, imposes moral ideas about what people think *should* happen on a reality that isn't affected by those ideas. This implies that when we try to regulate away the values of things, we're just hurting ourselves and delaying the inevitable.

[Penneywize]

Well I missed the boat on this discussion. At any rate it seems to me that Wuf has certainly made quite a journey from his views of like 4 years ago. I know this sounds douchey, and I don't mean it to be, but I found nothing to disagree with out of what he said lol.

Surviva, one quick point:

I think everyone who lives in a capitalist society will easily relate to the idea that there are the things you do to make money so that you can eat and live in a safe neighborhood, and then there is everything else you do with your life. The things people do at work is just about always of SOME value (and sometimes even very important), but the vast majority of the things that the vast majority of people can do with their lives that is of any value is done, literally, pro-bono, and thus doing things for the greater good is more-often-than-not discouraged by capitalism. Time is money and so people are very-close-to-directly-punished by wasting time stopping to help someone change a tire, spending time with their children, cooking homemade dinners, expressing non-sponsor friendly opinions on, creating things of niche interest, etc.

And yet people still do all that stuff. People still help other change a tire, spend time with their kids, cook homemade dinners and so on. And we all live in a highly capitalist society. This is because people don't need money to be the end result when maximizing their own utility. People do get something out of doing all those things you mentioned. It feels good to help other people (this depends on who you are, of course). It's nice to spend time with your family. Money can't buy those feelings.

In terms of alternative uses of time, yes there are always opportunity costs, and I guess you can argue that in a capitalist society that opportunity cost could always equate to money. But if you're working a 9 to 5 salary job, hours 5 to 12 are clearly worth less than those first ones because no one's going to pay you for them even if you wanted to work. You could take a part time job at a lower wage, OR you might be able to convince your employer to pay you overtime. How about that, then. Lots of people could put in overtime if they wanted, and that creates a larger opportunity cost to doing social or leisurely things. How to reconcile all this?

The gist of it is that everyone has a desire for both consumption (you know, consuming things) and leisure. Our desire for consumption is linked with our working hours. How much we want to consume determines how much we're willing to work and so on. Leisure is our desire for not working, enjoying life, spending time with family, doing whatever else floats your boat. Leisure does have a significant opportunity cost, but the empirical reality, as we all know, is that our leisure is worth a fuckton to us. And, if we were to work more, the remaining leisure time increases in value - none of us has unlimited time to spend on whatever we want, so there is an inherent tradeoff. And as we work more, and the remaining leisure time becomes relatively more valuable, we eventually hit a point where working one more hour isn't worth it compared to what we lose in leisure time. So we stop working.

Now you can see why it's not really a question of a capitalist system "punishing" people for wanting to do non-capitalist things; that it is more a matter of everyone behaving according to their own desires for consumption and leisure, that you can't be "punished" if what you're currently doing is in fact your utility-maximizing choice.

[wufwugy]

agreeing with me is a dangerous thing

[Renton]

Grunching a little but I take great issue with the idea that capitalism or capitalistic thinking is in opposition to people being happy and having leisurely lives or spending time with their families or helping one another. In fact, those all sound like great luxuries to me, luxuries that cannot really exist outside of a free market context. It wasn't until societies had accumulated enough wealth and productivity to feed themselves amply that people even had time to look at the stars or be academics or artists. Almost everything people in modern society do for pleasure they do because they make enough money in little enough time that they can spare time and money for such pleasures.

[surviva316]

I've gone a long time without responding to this post, even though the very first part of it did incite an immediate reaction from me. There is one particular part that made me loathe to get into it for a long time.

Your bit on coercion is based on a linguistic technicality.

No, it's not linguistic technicality at all. I never said dick about coercing non-coercion. Jails exist in capitalist societies, and they're filled to the brim with people who didn't regard property exactly as the society demands it be regarded.

The popular (somewhat antiquated) example is eating a loaf of bread when you don't have the means to by a loaf of bread, then you'll go to jail. More relevant here, though, is that if I don't follow one of the dozens of Terms in my mortgage contract, and I continue to sleep in my bedroom, then I can expect to be cuffed and hauled away. If I type the word Kellogg's on a piece of paper without accompanying it with a “T” with a circle around it, and then trade that piece of paper for a doughnut, then I will be at the mercy of our court system. If someone is accused of a felony, and they don't have the means to pay bail, then they're going to be forced to live in a cement box for a while. Anyone who comes to a rolling stop at a stop sign and doesn't have the means to pay a ticket and the proceeding probationary fees will be sent to jail.

I'm not saying that any of these laws are bad, and I'm certainly not saying that I prefer socialism to it (I'm not a socialist, btw, so I'm not at all making perfect the enemy of good), but to say that coercion doesn't exist in capitalism is madness. These uncited “pragmatic” definitions you have for “coercion” are almost certainly begging the question. In order to apply your self-defense analogy to property, you have to assume that someone is "defending" their "right" to a "property" they already "owned," which is assuming the very thing you're out to prove.

So it's you who's performing a semantical two-step by finding a way that the term applies to socialism and only socialism; not me. A socialist could play this very same game: “Everyone has the right to a certain baseline of means, so distributing from surplus to dearth is only coercion insofar as it's coercing the exercise of a right we all have.” But it's just that: a word game. The fairest interpretation of this speaker's point on “coercion” in economies (I think restriction would be more accurate, by the way, as the coercion is second order) is to say that they both are extremely coercive (or, rather, are both extremely restrictive, and are coercive in getting you to follow those restrictions).

SURVIVA: I think everyone who lives in a capitalist society will easily relate to the idea that there are the things you do to make money so that you can eat and live in a safe neighborhood, and then there is everything else you do with your life. The things people do at work is just about always of SOME value (and sometimes even very important), but the vast majority of the things that the vast majority of people can do with their lives that is of any value is done, literally, pro-bono, and thus doing things for the greater good is more-often-than-not discouraged by capitalism. Time is money and so people are very-close-to-directly-punished by wasting time stopping to help someone change a tire, spending time with their children, cooking homemade dinners, expressing non-sponsor friendly opinions on, creating things of niche interest, etc.


WUFWUGY: I disagree in some ways, but it's not really a relevant issue with respects to the capitalism/socialism thing. If socialism was a useful paradigm, what you wrote would still be something you could say.

The passage you quoted and dismissed was wholly relevant to my point. I'm not entirely sure if socialism fulfills those examples I gave any more or less than capitalism does, but leaving it at that is making imperfection the enemy of evil. The point here is that capitalism doesn't do what he says it does. The man in the video spends a lot of time on this unfounded arrogance of capitalism that it rewards things that are good for society and punishes things that aren't (and this is a prevailing faith in society), and that is complete bullshit, so I found it worthwhile to debunk it.


I live in America, and I receive a check from neither corporation nor country when I make someone laugh, teach someone an important fact about the world, help an elderly neighbor with lawn work, work on my novel, etc. To be sure, it'd be a cool world to live in where this were the case, and everyone would just go around acting on the greatest good for the greatest number all day and call it a job and a lifestyle wrapped in one, but this doesn't exist. All of these things actions, in fact, keep me from doing activities that helps make my company's name show up before its competitors on web searches, which is about the only way I'm rewarded by capitalism.

I, of course, have no idea how much socialism does or doesn't reward me for everything everyone does that is of good or use to society, but capitalism decidedly doesn't do it. Stop saying it. It's not true. It's not an exaggeration of any smaller truth. It is simple bullshit.


So if you disagree with what I wrote, by all means, spend time arguing it because it is relevant to this discussion.


But I'm skipping around a bit. I can go back to the middle part of your post, but my own is probably better off without it, and this is really what's kept me from "getting into it" for so long:

The only (not one of the only, but exactly only) thing in agricultural civilization that has increased living standards is innovation driven by markets and property. List something from your life, virtually anything, and you'll find that you have it because it and its antecedents have been monetized.

There seems to be an insistence on centering this conversation around property and only property. My fiance, my favorite jokes I ever heard and not having polio don't have all that much to do with anything monetized. I realize you said think of anything I “have”, but this only contributes to my point that you seem to have some sort of tunnel vision when talking about economics to only talk about our ability to gain relics of exclusive ownership, and in so doing, it's not all that profound that you keep finding capitalism as a great way to live up to that measure.


But that's an aside as much as anything. The more fundamental problem is that—even if I allow this conversation to be balanced on the stasis of value based on things that I own—I'm still skeptical of your point that everything that's good about my life is a credit to free market. But if I go any further, I'm 90%+ sure the response will be that it would take years of studying economics to get to your level of understanding at which point it would be plainly obvious that what you're saying here is correct, which makes this particular part of the conversation doomed to stall. I realize this is the very opposite of being as generous to the other side as possible, but whatever, that's the truth behind why I loathed to come up with a response to this part of the post for so long, so if that makes me a bad person, best to admit it.


EDIT: Wow, it seems to have handled my copy+paste from Word quite well. HURRAY!!!!

[surviva316]

Surviva, one quick point:

Grunching a little but I take great issue with the idea that capitalism or capitalistic thinking is in opposition to people being happy and having leisurely lives or spending time with their families or helping one another.

My point wasn't that capitalism is a time succubus meant to make you work 20 hours a day, sleep 4 hours and dream never. I was simply rebutting the speaker-in-OP's point that "Capitalism harnesses energy to a social, usable end." For the purposes of this conversation, I have no interest in the distinction between hours spent on consumption and leisure; I have interest in "energy" spent toward "social, usable ends" and energies spent otherwise. My daily actions of least utility are the ones I do to earn capital; just about everything else I do with my day is of more social and usable worth than my hours of consumption.

I do happen to believe that people in American society work too much (and that that work too infrequently holds mentionable social utility), but that is completely outside the scope of this discussion and will only serve as a distraction to the point.

Sorry if my grunching led to some redundancy.

[wufwugy]

These uncited “pragmatic” definitions you have for “coercion” are almost certainly begging the question.

I'd say that's accurate since I was trying to analyze the meaning in its most fundamental nature. At that level, premises are assumed

As for talking about "property and only property", this is within the context of economics and quantifiable social organization. These things need a set of assumptions. My comments about your comments about coercion were because I thought you were falling away from those assumptions into cluttered territory without much application

I think most (probably all) of your concerns are not addressed by socialism. Socialism is an economic theory, a debunked one. However, it is popular for people to consider it all sorts of different social philosophies. I mean to keep it within its economic confines. A "cultural sensibility of socialism" is sometimes entirely different than economic socialism

[surviva316]

I'd say that's accurate since I was trying to analyze the meaning in its most fundamental nature. At that level, premises are assumed.

Since I'm rebutting implied points, I was being generous by going with the softer fallacy. I actually think it's much more likely that you're using circular reasoning.

Besides, as I said, if we're allowed to speak within the rhetoric of the given philosophy without impunity, then a socialist would have an equally tenable rebuttal against the speaker in the Oxford video's argument of Socialism as Coercion. <---- That is a mess of a sentence, but I already made the point earlier, so whatever. Basically, if a capitalist is allowed to start (for practicality sake) with the assumption that people own personal property exclusively, and so society isn't really being coercive when they make people not touch that stuff, then a socialist should just as well be allowed to start with the assumption that the state owns the property of its country, so it isn't really being coercive when they distribute it as they'd like.

As for talking about "property and only property", this is within the context of economics and quantifiable social organization. These things need a set of assumptions.

I realize that we're talking about economic theory, but the benefits of economics extend beyond income and the value and availability of products on market. I assume you won't disagree with this, or else, boy, will I certainly be able to take a red pen to a lot of things the more libertarian-minded folk have said around here.

My comments about your comments about coercion were because I thought you were falling away from those assumptions into cluttered territory without much application

This is the severalth time you've referred to me venturing into impracticality, with no effort to show how this is the case. Both societies have k amount of stuff. Both societies have restrictions for how xpeople treat/regard/use that limited amount of stuff. When x people go beyond their bounds, their state imprisons/repossesses/fines/shoots/etc those people. I really have no idea whatsoever how considering both societies to be restrictive (resorting to coercion to keep people within those restrictions) is less practical than starting with uncited assumptions that lends us to the conclusion that one is coercive while the other is free.

I think most (probably all) of your concerns are not addressed by socialism.

That's fine, because I'm not arguing against capitalism, much less for socialism. I just happened to find this to be a boring video that provided nothing of worth to the conversation. Your article in the other thread, by the way, seems to be much more substantive, if more intensive in scope.

[surviva316]

My last quote and rebuttal might be a case of losing the forest from the trees. If I'm responding to your post as a whole, I'll say this:

If socialism is debunked, then great! Let's start there. What debunks it? If you can demonstrate that, then shoot, why are we wasting so much time talking about this silly video where this guy talks about how socialism is bad because it's coercive (even though the system he lauds is no less coercive) and that capitalism is great because it does {insert thing that it doesn't actually do}?

I realize that arguing against everything that's been said while giving no practicable alternative can frustrate people, but focusing a conversation can be immensely important. If you cut out all the white noise, the facts that remain are allowed to be brilliant.

[wufwugy]

Basically, if a capitalist is allowed to start (for practicality sake) with the assumption that people own personal property exclusively, and so society isn't really being coercive when they make people not touch that stuff, then a socialist should just as well be allowed to start with the assumption that the state owns the property of its country, so it isn't really being coercive when they distribute it as they'd like.

I believe herein lies the root of our disagreement. If we start from scratch and try to figure out who owns what, we can more accurately say "you own your body" than "the state owns....anything". This implies that the philosophical framework we should use should be what most reflects the truth that each person owns their own person as opposed to any other entity owning the person. The philosophy of non-coercion is to network this. It proposes a state that best maintains that nobody owns anything as much as a person owns himself/herself. Because we are conscious beings and many other things are not, we can expand this idea to a place where not only does somebody own his own body, but he owns inanimate things that he more or less creates. We can further expand into abstractions, like a person owning his choices

If what individuals have over themselves and their creations is liberty, then non-coercion policy is an attempt to mandate equality of this liberty for all. This can appear to impose upon any individual's liberty, but it's essentially the policy that maintains liberty for groups

Maybe that's the best way to put it: non-coercion is the idea of how to sustain liberty in populations while minimizing non-liberty for individuals within populations

[wufwugy]

I should add that the idea of ownership works beyond social philosophy and into applied macroeconomics. My best sources (like currently teaching professor Bryan Caplan) claim that when economists discuss policy, they're discussing incentives. This suggests that even if ownership is a problematic idea in some way, it still is a productive idea in macroeconomics

[surviva316]

... Because we are conscious beings and many other things are not, we can expand this idea to a place where not only does somebody own his own body, but he owns inanimate things that he more or less creates.

No we can't. This is utter sophistry.

The exact equivocation you quoted might be a stretch (I'm not sure, really), but don't let it get us sidetracked: it was a rewording of a sentence that itself was an echo of an earlier point that itself was nothing more than a hypothetical correlative argument whose only purpose was to give some viscerality to the fallacy I was pointing out.

This suggests that even if ownership is a problematic idea in some way, it still is a productive idea in macroeconomics

I don't at all mean to argue that ownership is problematic or non-productive or any of that. All I'm saying is that it involves restrictions. Honestly, though, I could give a flying fuck if some icky, scah-wee word like "coercive" can apply to an economic policy. There's no discussion where I'm more consequentialist than in economic policy, so if it's good for society, then I'm all for it. The stakes aren't high for me in this coercion part of the argument, as far as my beliefs on economic policy are concerned. This just happened to be where the guy in the video decided to start the discussion, and I thought it best to point out how full of shit he was.

I think the coercion thing should have run its course a long time ago. You said socialism has been debunked; this seems 1,00000000000 more fruitful ground to till.

[wufwugy]

No we can't. This is utter sophistry.

I guess I'm curious where you think ownership lies. Marx and Lenin believed ownership lay more in the hands in the laborers than in the managers and they wanted the state to enforce that. Even though I don't disagree with the idea that ownerships of product creation may lay more in the hands of laborers than managers, that doesn't mean that I think the state can create policy to effectively address this. On the contrary, I think the idea is most effectively addressed by capitalism. In capitalism, laborers far more appropriately reap what they sow. This sort of thing may have seemed far-fetched in the early years of the industrial revolution, but today we live in a time where the true limiting factor to somebody's success is themselves

At least in capitalism, value is applied to a laborer's labor, and ownership of product can grow from there. Socialism never sets value in a sustainable way, which is why it has yet to be sustained