Discussing Communism

[GoldRanger]

It isn't a strawman though? Or if it is I don't understand what you are arguing. You seemed to be saying there is no diversity of thought among philosophers. There is, and while most of that diversity is communism, some of it isn't.

Are you joking? You know, an overwhelming majority of philosophy graduates can be of the same or nearly the same political persuasion without the need for literally every last individual to be so for my argument to hold. So bringing up individual philosophers that go against the mold is a useless proposition. I would've thought it's blindingly obvious without me needing to explain it to you like a baby.

 

[Grimn]

You see, this is what my point is addressing. It doesn't even propose freedom. It's proposed method of solution, even in manic commie dreamworld, is still evil. One of the ways this evil spreads is that people don't realize that socialism is morally wrong, not just incapable of working. Then they think that they've solved the problem of implementing it, not realizing that the solution is evil regardless of the methods taken to get there.

But it does by virtue of them proposing it. Like Stalin thought that by eliminating private property and free markets in agriculture ie. forced collectivisation, productivity would increase, more grain could be exported funding industrialisation, increasing mechanisation in agriculture further increasing productivity. Then with all that material prosperity any peasant or worker could be free to be a Mozart or an Aristotle. Of course instead what happened was an enslavement of people on a scale never before seen. But that was all before the post-WW2 liberal democracies massively creating prosperity for the largest amount of people ever seen before.

But your point about socialism being morally wrong rather than just not working kind of goes against you agreeing that taxation is theft, doesn't it? If taxation is theft then it doesn't matter that it pays for things that work, it must be opposed because it's immoral to begin with.

 

[GoldRanger]

But it does by virtue of them proposing it. Like Stalin thought that by eliminating private property and free markets in agriculture ie. forced collectivisation, productivity would increase, more grain could be exported funding industrialisation, increasing mechanisation in agriculture further increasing productivity. Then with all that material prosperity any peasant or worker could be free to be a Mozart or an Aristotle. Of course instead what happened was an enslavement of people on a scale never before seen. But that was all before the post-WW2 liberal democracies massively creating prosperity for the largest amount of people ever seen before.

But your point about socialism being morally wrong rather than just not working kind of goes against you agreeing that taxation is theft, doesn't it? If taxation is theft then it doesn't matter that it pays for things that work, it must be opposed because it's immoral to begin with.

Any ideology that claims that taxation is inherently bad but can't propose a different idea on how society could function without it, is just as ridiculous as communism.

 

[Abhorsen]

But it does by virtue of them proposing it. Like Stalin thought that by eliminating private property and free markets in agriculture ie. forced collectivisation, productivity would increase, more grain could be exported funding industrialisation, increasing mechanisation in agriculture further increasing productivity. Then with all that material prosperity any peasant or worker could be free to be a Mozart or an Aristotle. Of course instead what happened was an enslavement of people on a scale never before seen. But that was all before the post-WW2 liberal democracies massively creating prosperity for the largest amount of people ever seen before.

So first, Stalin probably only thought "This gets me more power." But what I'm saying is that their claimed end was an illusion, covering more evil, whether they knew it or not. The end result, their hypothetical utopia, is evil, not just the means to get there, because it relies mass theft as the future Mozart would not have a right to control the fruits of their labor anymore than the common laborer would. And if the Aristotle said that the State was evil, we wouldn't hear from him again. The utopia itself is evil and lacking in freedom. The means to get their are evil, lacking in freedom, and the cause of some of the biggest mass murders in human history. Thankfully, it is self-defeating, but that's beside the point and really doesn't matter a whole lot.

But your point about socialism being morally wrong rather than just not working kind of goes against you agreeing that taxation is theft, doesn't it? If taxation is theft then it doesn't matter that it pays for things that work, it must be opposed because it's immoral to begin with.

So first, things that by themselves would be immoral can not be depending on context. For example, theft is wrong, but if someone's trying to stab you, you can steal their knife to disarm them. Part of the justification for taxation is that without it, the US would be invaded by a worse country as it couldn't fund a military, and that would cause mass suffering. Basically a small evil to stop a worse evil. This can arguably go as far as to justify slavery, when we realize that the draft is slavery, and (at least) two countries probably need the draft to survive against a greater evil (Israel to defend against mass genocide and South Korea to defend against full, permanent enslavement).

Any ideology that claims that taxation is inherently bad but can't propose a different idea on how society could function without it, is just as ridiculous as communism.

Not really. I mean, I hold it as inherently bad, but more of a necessary evil to function and survive as a society, lest worse stuff happen. I'm quite fine supporting bad things to stop worse things. Like I'll acknowledge that some civilian casualties in a just war are inevitable, view them as bad, and still propose methods of lowering them, and not get into unjust wars. The same thing is true for taxes: Some are inevitable to stop a greater evil, they are bad, we can lower the need for them in a number of places, and also we shouldn't spend taxes on a huge amount of stuff that we do.

 

[GoldRanger]

Not really. I mean, I hold it as inherently bad, but more of a necessary evil to function and survive as a society, lest worse stuff happen. I'm quite fine supporting bad things to stop worse things. Like I'll acknowledge that some civilian casualties in a just war are inevitable, view them as bad, and still propose methods of lowering them, and not get into unjust wars. The same thing is true for taxes: Some are inevitable to stop a greater evil, they are bad, we can lower the need for them in a number of places, and also we shouldn't spend taxes on a huge amount of stuff that we do.

Fair enough.

 

[mesonoxian]

Communism it seems ins so fragile that it will only work if a vast


They will deal with it the way they are dealing with it now..by funding your orgs, by giving you sinecures in the social justice clergy and academia, by giving you unlimited sexual hedonism, and by giving you what you really want, the right to police, abuse, humiliate and socially execute the deplorables.

They dont fear you, because they they already own you.

This is what we call a "persecution complex". Your imaginary culture war has nothing to do with any of this. Although the insight into what scares conservatives is interesting. apparently it remains being expected to treat others with respect and other people having sex.

I think there's also how the Left is also supported by demographics that are comparatively way more homophobic at best and at worst may do religious punishments for "sodomy"

The left or the Democrats? There is a difference.

No economic system has any regard for the "Moral worth" of people, because economics is about resource management, not the true value of the human soul or whatever.



There's actually no such thing as "marginal theory of demand", I think you're thinking of marginal utility, which has an impact on demand, but so do lots of other things.

You get the LtV broadly correct, and so the problem with it should be obvious. To quote Henlien:



Now, in fairness Marx realized this, hence his addition of "Socially necessary labor time" as a patch to get around that little issue, but the problem of that was that it's very clearly that, an ill-defined and vague patch to try and write around a fundamentally flawed assumption, and in doing so it turned LtV from a flawed theory to a useless one, because while you could get prices based on LtV, you can't do so with Marx's version. And LtV itself is useless, as it still has the base assumption that all labor is equally valuable, and that is simply not true. All labor is not equally valuable (also, this isn't even touching on stuff like direct vs indirect labor, but let's keep it simple).

But, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that it is, somehow. LtV is still useless, because prices are still going to be set by what people will pay, not what things are "worth", because if you don't do that you're going to kneecap the entire economy. The ability to charge more than the base price, IE "extracted surplus labor" or whatever, is critical to how the economy actually works. If you build something desirable and that commands a high price, you will earn more money, and be able to use that to expand, hire more people, buy more machines, make more of the thing, and make it more available to more people, and so on. Ban people from doing that terribly extraction, you cripple the ability of the economy to actually grow and expand. Ban it most of the way, by doing something like setting a fixed cap on how much more can be charged, and that's still bad, because while the economy can grow, it's growth rate is restricted across the board (not only can you not hire as many people as you could or buy as much equipment as you could, the people that build that equipment can't sell as much of it as they could, limiting their ability to grow, and so on).

If you want to see what happens when you ignore all those points and do it anyway, lookup the results of rent control.



A theory that doesn't produce a useful model of prices is useless and wrong, no matter what else you think you learn from it.



Yeah, if management and owners were nothing more than useless parasites taking away from the workers while doing nothing of worth, then you could make a moral argument against them. But that's not what happens in reality, in the overwhelming majority of cases. Company owners and leaders actually do work to advance the company's position and add value, and in addition provide other benifits (the most notable of which being they take on most of the risk, if the firm fails they stand to lose a great deal whereas the workers on the floor are largely immune to such consequences outside of needing a new job, which would happened anyway).

Now you can, and many people like you have, argue something to the effect of "But there's no way Jeff Bezos works so much he therefor deserves 200 billion dollars", to which I have several replies. First off, Bezos doesn't actually have 200 billion dollars sitting in a vault somewhere, look up how stocks work. Secondly, unfairness works both ways, Bezos doesn't deserve billions of dollars in the same way the entry level employees at amazon don't deserve $15 an hour. Third, Bezos more or less singlehandedly revolutionized online and offline commerce, logistics, data storage, and more, that may well be worth 200 billion dollars.

Now, one can argue that people at the top are still overpayed, and that might be the case. However, that's not the full story. Let's take walmart, the architypical mom and pop store crushing, union busting, surplus value extracting evil megacorporation. If you took every bit of money that's paid out to shareholders and executives and so on and gave it to the workers, it adds up to about a month's pay, which spread out over the year is like an $200. Now, I'm sure they'd love the extra money, I certainly would have when I worked there. However, I'm also sure that an extra $200 a month is not going to be a massive, life chancing quality of life enhancement for the vast majority of them, and if it was you could probably do better by just buying everyone a copy of Financial Peace instead.

Given communism's 100% failure rate thus far, I don't think it's worth the risk of turning the entire country into a mismanaged tolitarian state on the off chance we actually get Real Communism this time and everyone becomes a few hundred bucks richer. The communist argument in this case is broadly equivalent to having a car that runs well and does everything you want it to, but it has a really ugly interior, which you plan to solve by blowing up the entire car in the hopes that you can build a more functional motorcycle out of the remains.


As a final point regarding ownership, people have the moral right to do what they want with their prosperity, and private property is something that's seemingly hard coded into human nature, given how common the concept has been (even in tribal societies well below dunbar's number, where in theory a purely communal lifestyle is possible).




Again, this "wealth extraction" thing your on about doesn't exist, there is no such concept in actual economics. Also, our economy is by no means "built on" any such thing, it is entirely possible to have a functional economy with strong worker protection (there's just no motive for people to demand it, because at the end of the day no one cares about sweatshop labor in dirtpooristan if it means their ipods are cheaper, and aren't willing to make the sacrifices nessary to ethically source everything they use or go without the things they can't source).

Thirdly, they're still better off this way (or at least, no worse off). In some hypothetical, no access to cheap third world labor world, those people would either A) not have jobs at all, depressing their standard of living even farther, or B) would still be opressed labors in terrible or worse conditions, but from a domestic company instead of an international one. Because the problem here isn't capitalism, the problem is some countries are terrible and have terrible worker protection. Someone would exploit that, the only question is who. And if you live in a country with worker protection that weak, poor worker protection is also probably the least of your problems.

And of course, as terrible as that is, we're back to the "blowing up to car to try and cobble together a motorcycle" plan. The risk/reward ratio here is not in favor of starting a communist revolution on the off chance we can marginally improve the lives of people in some far off country somehow.

I actually meant to say "marginal theory of value", which is also wrong. It has been a long ass day.

Labor theory of value isn't intended to figure out how prices will emerge in a capitalist market (though I understand that Marx attempted to use it for that, that isn't what it is used for by modern Marxists.) My understanding is that most Marxian economists actually use the Sraffian theory of value, my understanding of which is limited to the fact spellcheck doesn't believe in it. Being neither an economist nor a Marxist, I don't feel much need to learn more.

I disagree that people have the right to do what they want with their prosperity. Because in most cases, it isn't theirs and because a lot of what they do with it is pretty horrible. And private property isn't at all a part of human nature. There is a distinction between personal property, the stuff you actually use day to day and need to keep exclusive control of, and private property, used for the accumulation of wealth. that notion of a single good shared by the community is extremely widespread, and present even in western culture up to the end of the middle ages.

Also, not all varieties of communism are identical. The variety that has actually been attempted differs in some pretty fundamental ways from what Marx actually wrote. And I don't mean in practice. I mean the theoretical intent of Lenin and company was very different than what Marx wrote. Among other things, it is inherently more authoritarian, relying on a "vanguard party" without a popular movement. So even when you are talking about Marxism, there is no reason for them to take ownership on the failures of Leninists and Stalinists. And plenty of communists aren't actually Marxists.

The mom and pop stores aren't necessarily any better than Walmart. Exploitation is exploitation. The multinationals are more efficient about it, but the principle is the same. Why exactly don't Amazon workers deserve $15 an hour? They are actually working. Have you ever done warehouse work? It isn't trivial, and Amazon's labor practices are especially unpleasant. But all this talk about how much people make is missing the point entirely.

Despite the amount of bloviating people do about the soulless materialism of communism, making more money isn't actually the end goal. The goal is the dissolution of the unjust hierarchies created by capitalism. We shouldn't have a society where people die of treatable illness, starve, or go without shelter because they can't help enrich some ghoul like Bezos or Musk. We shouldn't have a world where people are brutalized to keep the cost of sneakers and soda down. And we shouldn't have a political system where billionaires can subvert the political order.

We might be able to push back on any one of those issues temporarily, but we have before and the oligarchs just slowly undo that work, until we have a generation that doesn't remember the last time they fucked everything up. Money becomes political power, and that means there is always a powerful force working against any serious worker protections. And the rich have always been willing to play on any prejudice they can to keep people docile. They play white against black, straight against gay, Christian against Muslim. They sell people scary stories about dangerous trans people and godless scientists, and do whatever else they can to keep people voting against their interests. They lied for decades about how products were killing us, and lied about the consequences of pollution. For nothing but a few dollars they don't actually need.

I wasn't using "wealth extraction" as some economics term. I just meant they take place where there are vulnerable people or undefended resources and take as much as they can while giving as little back as possible. the most desperate people are exploited by the absolute richest, so they can increase an arbitrary number that has no meaningful impact on their lives.

Our economy is built on exactly those abuses. They occur overseas so the customers aren't upset, but as I mentioned before, I don't think the value of the lives or welfare of people is diminished by their distance from me. I don't think we should operate a system which depends on exploitation and violence to function, even if you never have to see the faces of the exploited. Maybe you're alright with that if it gets you a cheaper ipod. I'm not. Studies have been done that show that trivially small loans (like $300) to people who would otherwise be desperate enough to work in unsafe factories in Bangladesh is enough to not just keep them from starving but to permanently increase their standard of living.

We can choose to make things better. If we don't, that's on us.

Are you joking? You know, an overwhelming majority of philosophy graduates can be of the same or nearly the same political persuasion without the need for literally every last individual to be so for my argument to hold. So bringing up individual philosophers that go against the mold is a useless proposition. I would've thought it's blindingly obvious without me needing to explain it to you like a baby.

I am perhaps being unclear. My point wasn't that 100% of philosophers not being communists means they are diverse. It is that communist is an incredibly wide umbrella and even still not everyone falls under it. Does that make sense?

But it does by virtue of them proposing it. Like Stalin thought that by eliminating private property and free markets in agriculture ie. forced collectivisation, productivity would increase, more grain could be exported funding industrialisation, increasing mechanisation in agriculture further increasing productivity. Then with all that material prosperity any peasant or worker could be free to be a Mozart or an Aristotle. Of course instead what happened was an enslavement of people on a scale never before seen. But that was all before the post-WW2 liberal democracies massively creating prosperity for the largest amount of people ever seen before.

But your point about socialism being morally wrong rather than just not working kind of goes against you agreeing that taxation is theft, doesn't it? If taxation is theft then it doesn't matter that it pays for things that work, it must be opposed because it's immoral to begin with.

I don't think Stalin thought any such thing. He was a pathologically paranoid psychopath.

 

[GoldRanger]

I am perhaps being unclear. My point wasn't that 100% of philosophers not being communists means they are diverse. It is that communist is an incredibly wide umbrella and even still not everyone falls under it. Does that make sense?

Yes, but this does nothing to dispell my accusation. If, for the sake of argument, 95% of philosophy graduates are communists, even if they have significant differences of opinion among them, that still reflects a staggeringly uniform way of thought for a field that purports to "challenge assumptions" or whatnot.

 

[Grimn]

So first, Stalin probably only thought "This gets me more power." But what I'm saying is that their claimed end was an illusion, covering more evil, whether they knew it or not. The end result, their hypothetical utopia, is evil, not just the means to get there, because it relies mass theft as the future Mozart would not have a right to control the fruits of their labor anymore than the common laborer would. And if the Aristotle said that the State was evil, we wouldn't hear from him again. The utopia itself is evil and lacking in freedom. The means to get their are evil, lacking in freedom, and the cause of some of the biggest mass murders in human history. Thankfully, it is self-defeating, but that's beside the point and really doesn't matter a whole lot.

Stephen Kotkin makes a good argument in his biography of Stalin that forced collectivisation only made sense if Stalin was a genuine Marxist. He had all the power already, increasing grain harvests, things were going well, yet he jeopardised his rule and the whole of the USSR by forcing collectivisation. And if he didn't believe that collective farms, eliminating the last vestiges of capitalism from the USSR would yield better results then what's the point of being Marxist at all? I do agree it's self-defeating, but in the mid-late 1930s with what little selected information coming from the Soviet Union it seemed like an emerging juggernaut, even though IIRC in 1939 grain harvests were below 1914 levels. All of that was of course the intermediate phase to communism.

Really, my point is just that when the marxists, etc say they want to free the masses I can believe that's what they want, while also recognising that they'll almost certainly create tyranny.

So first, things that by themselves would be immoral can not be depending on context. For example, theft is wrong, but if someone's trying to stab you, you can steal their knife to disarm them. Part of the justification for taxation is that without it, the US would be invaded by a worse country as it couldn't fund a military, and that would cause mass suffering. Basically a small evil to stop a worse evil. This can arguably go as far as to justify slavery, when we realize that the draft is slavery, and (at least) two countries probably need the draft to survive against a greater evil (Israel to defend against mass genocide and South Korea to defend against full, permanent enslavement).

All that says to me is that if socialism worked it would be fine. You'd probably say that socialism working as intended would be evil, but if it never works out in the first place and results in evil then I don't see much of a difference.

 

[mesonoxian]

Yes, but this does nothing to dispell my accusation. If, for the sake of argument, 95% of philosophy graduates are communists, even if they have significant differences of opinion among them, that still reflects a staggeringly uniform way of thought for a field that purports to "challenge assumptions" or whatnot.

Or possibly it means without the assumption the current order is good there is little reason to support it.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Or possibly it means without the assumption the current order is good there is little reason to support it.

Depends on how you define the current order. There is no belief system or ideology, beyond maybe people who work for the World Economic Forum, or Senate lobbyists who would unironically proclaim themselves defenders of the current order.

 

[GoldRanger]

Or possibly it means without the assumption the current order is good there is little reason to support it.

Even if that were true I would've expected much more diversity in alternative modes of thinking than different flavors of communism. Hell, by this point widespread (and mostly baseless) accusations against the "current order" have been around for decades. I'd argue that it's staunch support of the current order that is the less conformist position, certainly in academic circles (Economy faculties nothwithstanding).

 

[Deleted member 88]

Depends, there are elements of the current order just about everyone dislikes. So are we just talking capitalism, or neoliberal capitalism, or modernity, or the current state of religiousity, the international system, US hegemony, etc... there are so many elements that make up “the current order” just about everyone who is political is opposed to some or another aspect of it.

 

[mesonoxian]

Even if that were true I would've expected much more diversity in alternative modes of thinking than different flavors of communism. Hell, by this point widespread (and mostly baseless) accusations against the "current order" have been around for decades. I'd argue that it's staunch support of the current order that is the less conformist position, certainly in academic circles (Economy faculties nothwithstanding).

There aren't a lot of alternatives outside different flavors of communism except different flavors of capitalism.

I mentioned it over in the Election fraud thread, but since I have replied to a lot of people here I thought I would mention that I probably won't be posting here for a long while if at all. Anyway, I appreciate the conversation and the willingness to listen. Take it easy.

 

[Deleted member 88]

I mentioned it over in the Election fraud thread, but since I have replied to a lot of people here I thought I would mention that I probably won't be posting here for a long while if at all. Anyway, I appreciate the conversation and the willingness to listen. Take it easy.

As I said on the election thread, I wish you well and pray for God’s grace to shine on you.

You are an intelligent and sensitive man, and present your arguments with grace and dexterity.

Merry Christmas to you! May you have God’s peace and blessing!

Lord Invictus.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Labor theory of value isn't intended to figure out how prices will emerge in a capitalist market (though I understand that Marx attempted to use it for that, that isn't what it is used for by modern Marxists.) My understanding is that most Marxian economists actually use the Sraffian theory of value, my understanding of which is limited to the fact spellcheck doesn't believe in it. Being neither an economist nor a Marxist, I don't feel much need to learn more.

You're missing the point. LtV won't work in any market, capitalist or otherwise. In any system, people will still need money as a medium of exchange and use prices as a tool to manage resources and generate market signals, and LtV's faulty assumptions will still cause problems. Why do you think that communist countries are perpetually short on consumer goods (not "are intentionally more spartan than capitalist countries because reasons", I mean there's supposed to be plenty of something and there's not).

I disagree that people have the right to do what they want with their prosperity. Because in most cases, it isn't theirs and because a lot of what they do with it is pretty horrible. And private property isn't at all a part of human nature. There is a distinction between personal property, the stuff you actually use day to day and need to keep exclusive control of, and private property, used for the accumulation of wealth. that notion of a single good shared by the community is extremely widespread, and present even in western culture up to the end of the middle ages.

No one but communists recognizes a distinction between personal property and private property, and the fact that public goods are recognized by other society's (including western society, today. We didn't lose track of that concept after the middle ages) doesn't debunk the fact that private property is a universal concept.

Also, not all varieties of communism are identical. The variety that has actually been attempted differs in some pretty fundamental ways from what Marx actually wrote. And I don't mean in practice. I mean the theoretical intent of Lenin and company was very different than what Marx wrote. Among other things, it is inherently more authoritarian, relying on a "vanguard party" without a popular movement. So even when you are talking about Marxism, there is no reason for them to take ownership on the failures of Leninists and Stalinists. And

Yes, yes, I'm aware of the "Not Real Communism" dodge.

The mom and pop stores aren't necessarily any better than Walmart. Exploitation is exploitation. The multinationals are more efficient about it, but the principle is the same. Why exactly don't Amazon workers deserve $15 an hour? They are actually working. Have you ever done warehouse work? It isn't trivial, and Amazon's labor practices are especially unpleasant. But all this talk about how much people make is missing the point entirely.

I haven't worked warehouse jobs, but I know people who have and they've said Amazon's work conditions are on par with the industry standards. And yes, they're working, at a low skill, easily done job that requires no particular talent or ability, that's not the sort of work that commands twice the minimum wage. I know semi-skilled lvlabor jobs that don't pay that well, or pay just barely more.

Despite the amount of bloviating people do about the soulless materialism of communism, making more money isn't actually the end goal. The goal is the dissolution of the unjust hierarchies created by capitalism. We shouldn't have a society where people die of treatable illness, starve, or go without shelter because they can't help enrich some ghoul like Bezos or Musk. We shouldn't have a world where people are brutalized to keep the cost of sneakers and soda down. And we shouldn't have a political system where billionaires can subvert the political order.

We don't have a society where people die and suffer because it won't give Bezos money. We have a society like that because the resources to do otherwise don't exist, or because the issue isn't a resource shortage. We don't have a society where people are oppressed to keep costs low, we have a society where people are oppressed because humans are inherently sinful and will abuse power if they have it.

This will happen no matter how you run the economy, no matter how you run the country. The best you can do is aim for systems that are the least bad, and communism is not one of them.

We might be able to push back on any one of those issues temporarily, but we have before and the oligarchs just slowly undo that work, until we have a generation that doesn't remember the last time they fucked everything up. Money becomes political power, and that means there is always a powerful force working against any serious worker protections. And the rich have always been willing to play on any prejudice they can to keep people docile. They play white against black, straight against gay, Christian against Muslim. They sell people scary stories about dangerous trans people and godless scientists, and do whatever else they can to keep people voting against their interests. They lied for decades about how products were killing us, and lied about the consequences of pollution. For nothing but a few dollars they don't actually need.

Blaming billionaires for all of societies ills is a cheap cop out answer to pin the fault for our problems on someone else, as I've said before. The case that all our problems are caused by billionaires holding too.mych money is not really supported by the evidence or even basic logic. If you somehow manage to eliminate any influence from money, you won't fix anything, you'll just create a new problem because there will always be people that weird disproportionate influence. Some people are just naturally charismatic, some people are better speakers, some people have connections and allies that other don't, etc.

And frankly, it's hilarious that you just write this off as "the rich", as if they're all on the same side or something. Rich people are famously divided on all sorts of issues and have different, conflicting interests. The main point of similarity between J.K. Rowling, Bezos, Koch, and Gates is the number of digits in thier bank account, I'd be surprised if they agreed on more than half dozen issues.

I wasn't using "wealth extraction" as some economics term. I just meant they take place where there are vulnerable people or undefended resources and take as much as they can while giving as little back as possible. the most desperate people are exploited by the absolute richest, so they can increase an arbitrary number that has no meaningful impact on their lives.

Again, this is just shifting blame so you can pin everything wrong in the world on one group. Who's more responsible for crappy factory conditions in China, President of China Xi Jinping or President of Mattel Richard Dickson (man, I thought giving people names like that was illegal)?

Our economy is built on exactly those abuses. They occur overseas so the customers aren't upset, but as I mentioned before, I don't think the value of the lives or welfare of people is diminished by their distance from me. I don't think we should operate a system which depends on exploitation and violence to function, even if you never have to see the faces of the exploited. Maybe you're alright with that if it gets you a cheaper ipod. I'm not. Studies have been done that show that trivially small loans (like $300) to people who would otherwise be desperate enough to work in unsafe factories in Bangladesh is enough to not just keep them from starving but to permanently increase their standard of living.

We can choose to make things better. If we don't, that's on us.

I think you're massively overstating how responsible we are for what happens overseas and how much we can change it, but I agree that we can choose to make things better. A big part of that involves a taking a long, hard look in the mirror and reflecting on our own actions before we make the massive the mental leap to "everything wrong in the world is because a secert cabel of Jews is ruining everything, setting us against one other so they line thier own pocket....wait, did I say Jews, I meant to say the 1%, sorry, slip of the tongue."

 

[Morphic Tide]

There aren't a lot of alternatives outside different flavors of communism except different flavors of capitalism.

Oh, so you're admitting to being a hyperbiased dimwit with dick-all understanding of the breadth of organizatinal theories, are you? Even at the most spectacularly generalizing, there's always walking back to Feudalism or Merchanitism or the way Rome was running thing or shifting to shameless Corporatism or carving Syndicalism out of Communist theory to be its own thing or any manner of other large-scale economic structures.

You thinking everything neatly boils down to just "Communism vs. Capitalism" marks you as being so comprehensively ignorant of extremely basic history that you almost shouldn't be allowed in this thread, simply because you don't have the slightest clue about the quite visible context of where Communism came from, because the French absolute monarchy had goddamn dick all to do with either end of your supposed dychotomy, because it predates both and did not directly found them.

 

[AnimalNoodles]

This is what we call a "persecution complex". Your imaginary culture war has nothing to do with any of this. Although the insight into what scares conservatives is interesting. apparently it remains being expected to treat others with respect and other people having sex.

We say the same thing about you.

Our observation is that you always accuse others of the things you intend to do. It does not change the essential truth that your movement is bought and paid for by the billionaires via the NGO complex.

 

[Abhorsen]

Stephen Kotkin makes a good argument in his biography of Stalin that forced collectivisation only made sense if Stalin was a genuine Marxist.

Huh, that's interesting. I'll have to read more about this. Do you have a link to the place where he argued this?

Really, my point is just that when the marxists, etc say they want to free the masses I can believe that's what they want, while also recognising that they'll almost certainly create tyranny.

The thing I'm arguing is that what they want isn't freedom. They want equality, which is very different. They might add the word freedom to what they do, but it's always a lie, as socialism, even if it worked, would not allow freedom. And it's important to attack them for this.

All that says to me is that if socialism worked it would be fine.

Not really. See, the reason the taxes are justified is they are necessary to prevent a worse evil. The problem with socialism is that it combines initial mass theft with ongoing mass slavery and refuses to ask about consent, so it's very difficult to justify unless somehow a) it works (the necessary part), and b) there's a greater evil it defends against. And outside of the Nazis and intra-commie wars (see Vietnam vs. the Khmer Rouge), part (b) rarely gets hit. And part (a) never works.

The one time it would be okay is if everybody involved agreed to it, and have the freedom to leave. So I have no moral problem with communes, for example.

You'd probably say that socialism working as intended would be evil, but if it never works out in the first place and results in evil then I don't see much of a difference.

The difference only matters in a debate. Basically, by calling it inescapably evil because it involves no consent, you cut off "They've never tried true communism" off at it's knees, because you declare that too to be evil. And it's a powerful argument. I mean, look at @mesonoxian. They have no response to me calling out the lack of consent central to socialism other than saying my argument is icky. They haven't even denied it's true.

 

[Grimn]

Huh, that's interesting. I'll have to read more about this. Do you have a link to the place where he argued this?

There's a bunch lectures he gives on YT on the subject but I can't really provide a timestamp since I haven't watched any of them in a while. Loaned the books from the library too so I'm going from memory anyway.

 

[Abhorsen]

There's a bunch lectures he gives on YT on the subject but I can't really provide a timestamp since I haven't watched any of them in a while. Loaned the books from the library too so I'm going from memory anyway.

I'll have to watch then.