He's both cute and adorable. Called it. Oh and his posting record was that of a Clinton/Bernie spam bot during the election. I think he's the only poster I put on ignore. Not surprising though that Wookie backs up his spam though.

An example of a capitalist society putting property rights way ahead of human rights is with the US transatlantic slavetrade for planetation work.

That doesnt mean that there is a deeper connection between capitalism and slavery or that capitalism promotes slavery, something which i believe to not be the case, it just means that slavery can happen under capitalism as well as under any other economy.

The only society where slavery cant happen in any meaningful way of the word is in a society where morals has advanced past it or where there is a law that says you arent allowed to own slaves.

Economy of the SovietUnion

Quote:

The economy of the Soviet Union was based on a system of state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing and centralized administrative planning. The economy was characterised by state control of investment, public ownership of industrial assets, macroeconomic stability, negligible unemployment and high job security.[14]

So Einbert has embraced the idea that state should own essentially all means of production which means that private enterprise should be eliminated more or less. I think it is fair to state that many on the left would prefer that government in the USA should have more control over the means of production basically. By having more control of the means of production, the US government has more control of what workers are paid for their labor and thus rectifying to a at least some extent income inequality. What industries should the US government be taking at least morecontrol of? Certainly the health care industry would be one of them. Probably energy production too. Anything else?

No, that would be taking things too seriously. The story is that einbert joined a social club at a local university or community college. And it's adorable. No one takes seriously the position of the abolition of free enterprise.

I thought libertarians believe that free enterprise isn't possible under statism?

Gandalf the Red ITT

Well, that's not true. It's illegal everywhere and there's still plenty of it in the world, supposedly more than at any time in the past.

Einbert said something about not being a statist, which is why I suggested he read an anarcho-socialist.

I think state control of healthcare would be cool in our current society as well. I wouldn't say energy in general because with wind and solar it is quite easy for individuals or communities to generate energy, but the public/private utility system does require so many public resources and impacts people so broadly that in theory I think nationalizing it might be good. But, that would have more variance I think. For example, the Trump admin would be worse than any private ownership. At least the current system leaves states like California with a lot of control.

I don't think much of the left is looking for a lot of nationalizing industries, more just holding the line against privatization of what is already public like roads, parks and schools.

In the old days slavery was like an institution, thats sort of what im talking about. Something that was seen as totally legit and you would have them work or fight for you. I suppose what you are talking about is people that are traded on the black market illegally and is forced to do hard illegal work. If you dont think theres a difference between societies where it is illegal and where it is institutionalized then ok, but thats a distinction that i would make.

However if there is more slaves now than in the past you would want to view it in proportion to population size, we have a few billion people now you know. I dont see how it can be comparable to the past.

United Nations figures put it at 25m people in forced labour and 15m in forced marriages giving us 40m people in modern slavery. This is different to perpetual hereditary chattel slavery but is still horrendous on any scale.

Communism in theory is one thing. Communism in practice has been largely indistinguishable from dictatorship -- at best by a group of elites, at worst by a cult of personality, and never by the proletariat.

The pop psychology explanation we are all given in college -- namely, that a "temporary" dictatorship is incompatible with human nature -- is part of the explanation. But the more fundamental problem is that the communist utopia where workers control the means of production is incompatible with economic complexity and global economic competition.

That complexity almost guarantees a hierarchy where the workers at the bottom have little or no agency. The only question is whether you want corporate overlords at the top of the hierarchy, or a massive, and probably dictatorial, state structure.

A lot of the sins that people attribute to capitalism are better described as sins of the nation-state. In other words, they are not necessarily peculiar to one economic system or another. (Communism in practice has been no solution to inherent problems of the balkanized nation-state.)

I'm not arguing for AC-ism, but rather for globalism, which is probably the best potential cure for the ills of the nation-state. In any case, it certainly seems inevitable.

I'm not really sure how to charachterize modern slavery. I've searched the subject many times and it's hard to get an idea of what is being called slavery and how many people fit what descriptions. There are still people bought and sold in agriculture (chocolate). I imagine they count agricultural workers who are held captive during the season (a lot of the tomatoes that come from Mexico). Sex trafficing of course. A lot of mining in Africa. Being illegal, there aren't the open markets.

I suspect it's not really a fair comparison and when advocacy groups say there are 30M modern day slaves and that's more than anytime in history, they are counting a wider array of conditions as slavery now. But, I don't think it's like they are calling people slaves just because they are below minimum wage or their employer stole their wages. There are many millions of people in the world working under violent threat, not free to leave, making many of the products we use and it's part of why there's a lot of cheap stuff.

Workers control Mondragon a large advanced technology industrial company with 88k people operating and trading in the global economy. Worker control does not necessarily mean central planning of whole industries and economies or any sort of dictatorship.

(I just found the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy, which surrounds Bologna, has 40% of it's GDP from worker owned coops. In Bologna 2 out of 3 people are members of a cooperative.)

Well, look around you, you see statism and free enterprise. anarcho-capitalism is the theory that free enterprise can work without the state, and it can and does as well. I'm not going to de-rail, dereds, though.

I get your point, but I don't think we have to consider the transatlantic slave trade as some sort of benchmark for what constitutes slavery as long as we are careful to distinguish. I'm familiar with left arguments around wage slavery for instance but it's not a term I use because I think the differences prevent it from adding meaningfully to a discussion around the inequities of capitalism.

I'll take a look when I'm home to see what I have on modern slavery.

This Soviets-stopped-the-Nazis argument needs a little more context. Sure they eventually stopped the Nazis when the Nazis turned on them, but they were allied with the Nazis against the Poles when WWII started and certainly contributed far more to Nazi crimes than any other non-Axis nation. Avoidance of human suffering is much less coincidental than you think.

This is a split from a low content thread I don't think it's possible to derail.

In any case I understood that regulations and govt interference precludes free enterprise. That having to pay taxes or abide by regulations means that contracting parties are not free to decide terms.

LOL, I'm sure there are many very valid, non-racist reasons to believe something like this.

This is true but it has absolutely nothing to do with free market philosophy. Laws banning organization, competition, and independence are antithetical to capitalism, and if you don't want people attributing Stalin and Mao's histories to your cause, you should stop doing the same to others and start arguing on the merits.

The internet maybe.

I think my terminology is right here and free markets are not the same as capitalism and they predate it by a lot, and those laws are antithetical to free markets, but not to capitalism. That said, I don't think capitalists in general block things like online poker, but specific capitalists with too much power. Also, it isn't just capitalists, but special interests. Labor unions have opposed online poker as well.

You need capitalism and then you just redistribute the wealth afterwards through taxation to create a more even society. Solved.

Yes, let's have communism! Let Trumps kids plan the entire economy with a "Bigly 5 year plan"... this will be great!

That is not communism. It is bunch of people collectively owning and running a business that exists in the free market.

I was replying to a post about worker control. It is worker control. If workers controlled all corporations, if that were a requirement of corporate law even, there could still be a free market.