Communist Views

[Cavernio]

I've just thought of more things to add. Firstly, there are plenty of other jobs that, again, exist purely because of capitalism, and that effort could be put towards more productive things. The stock market is the biggest one that I can't imagine I didn't think of earlier. Along with that goes banking, financial advisors and taxes. These are all positions which exist because we're capitalist.

Another bonus to not being capitalist would be that there would be no reason to swindle anyone. The example that came to mind is actually swindling on a large scale, and is also affecting the quality of research we do. It's the pharmaceutical industry. Anyone in a medical or biological field knows to be very critical as to where money for research has come, and if a person writing an artical is actively being paid money by a company to portray a drug or treatment in better light than was actually shown. Without money though, there'd be no incentive beyond personal glory (which I don't think there'd be much of since no one would know who you were anyways), to spruce up results of drug therapies. There'd also be no reason for manufacturers to make fake drugs, put brand-name labels on them, and sell them worldwide, while people die because they think they're taking their medication when they're not.

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

What I have a problem with is that a capitalist society not just allows for inequality, it absolutely supports it. Yes, us in north america have it great. For countries who have not grown economically as fast as us, businesses take full advantage with things like sweat shops and disparaties in the value of different nation's currency. I mean, if we had slaves, the non-slaves wealth would also be really good. I want to explore better options for humanity than this.

You're comparing the voluntary exchange of goods and services to involuntary labor.

You're right though, there is inequality in capitalism. People gain at unequal rates. That's not something to cry about.

You are wrong.

Show me.

You go on to talk about a formula and demonstrate it, while acknowledging it's oversimplification. Rule #1 in a social science: any math used to explain something will never be complex enough to explain it properly.

First of all, this is an example of why social science isn't science. Second of all, Economics isn't a social science, it's the study of the distribution of goods and services.

When I said it was an oversimplification I mostly meant that it represents everyone's "share" of the total cost of redistribution equally, when this is not the case. Some people pay more than others. Some don't pay anything at all.

My experience is is that it can be so far off that it's more of a hindrance than a help. When that formula was developed, it was a model, and a representation. You are presenting it the other way round though, that we must follow that model.

I don't actually know what you're saying. Outside of the issue of uneven redistribution cost, there's absolutely nothing there to object to. The formula represents the nature of material wealth.

Why? Because there's much less duplication of work in a centrally run system. In this case, the largest duplication of work was insurance companies that each have their own beaurocracy and paperwork. Of course, the fact that increased costs in healthcare comes largely from insurance is sweetly ironic in this discussion. Insurance companies make profit from a group of very willing people paying monthly fees for services they may never use. Not only do people who can afford it already pay a 'tax' for healthcare, (and from my understanding, you're nuts not to have it) but it doesn't even go directly into the paying for their 'care' at all. The profit made just goes to people who are using capitalism to make money while not actually offering a service.

Redundancy isn't the difficulty with insurance companies. In fact it can't be. The existence of Coke doesn't make Pepsi more expensive, it makes it less expensive because of competitive pressure. Same thing with the existence of different insurance companies. The fact that there are a large number of people providing ostensibly the same service doesn't actually mean anything, and it certainly doesn't cost anyone anything extra.

Part of the difficulty is that there's regulation that requires insurance companies to have a certain amount of money on hand. They are required to be able to pay for services for a larger number of people at any given time than they would ever need to. As a result of this, they have to charge more, and since they have to charge more people that would have been customers under market conditions suddenly aren't.

As for your last complaint, I don't even know. There are a lot of services that aren't payed for directly by the people that use them. Isn't this something you're trying to pass of as a virtue of centrally organized economics? Their care is payed for, nobody cares if it's directly or not, it's completely absurd to claim that no service is being provided here.

However, what has not been mentioned is the flipside into all the extra work people do because of capitalism. Insurance companies are one of them. Advertising is another. Ok, well, not ALL advertising would go away with communism, but there certainly wouldn't be nearly as much.

It doesn't formally matter whether or not people work more, if they do it of their own free will. You're forgetting, people get payed to work. In fact the desirability of job creation is often a principal argument made by supply-siders. What you're committing is basically something like a reverse broken window fallacy, which is kind of amazing. As if the mere existence of windows, by entailing the possibility of work for the cobbler and the glass maker and the baker, somehow represents a negative utility outcome. Good job, you're insane.

I'm positive there are more, very common jobs that exist purely because capitalism exists, but I hate business and haven't bothered to learn about it.

Sentences like these make me wonder if you aren't just wasting my time. Sure there are jobs that exist purely because of capitalism. It's pretty close to all of them. The existence of things like professional athletes, and cinema critics, and porn stars, and stock market speculators however reflects on the success of capitalism as a means of wealth creation. People wouldn't pay for porn if they couldn't afford food. If they ever stop, it won't be a sign of economic prosperity.

I've definitely seen more blatant examples of capitalist 'busy-work' though. I know factories who are run by people who want to do good for their community, who will purposefully keep people employed rather than update their machinery. I can't blame them for what they do, but that that situation should ever occur is stupid, plain and simple.

What?

Companies grow and are managed in a top-down way...that's how business works.

No, business works when one company finds a market, either by establishing its own niche or else outcompeting another due to one form or another of superiority. Central management is just one example of a way to run a business. Whether it is more efficient or not is determined in the bottom line of each individual business.

Of course, when the market does manage great effiency like this, it turns into a monopoly, where we basically have a government-like corporation instead. This is my perception of things, and why I like my government and socialism. I'd rather have government than corporation.

Why? If a company outcompetes another without any sort of coercive etiology, it's a direct mark of their success at providing a valuable good or service. If there were any monopolies in a free market it could only be because the company in question was damn near perfect.

Also, what? If Ford Motor Company or Walmart became the only auto-maker/wholesale retailer in the country or even the world, they wouldn't become government. Why would they? What would they be doing? How exactly would this transition work?

I admit that there are cases in which private companies and government are equally capable of generating a given externality, but the principal distinction now and forever is that while both could generate it in the future, only government comes with an upfront negative utility cost in the form of the coercion it takes for it to operate.

Effectively, you are saying that if you have to choose between following two people with power, and you know that both could use that power to hurt you, you would rather go with the person with a history of violence.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

I've just thought of more things to add. Firstly, there are plenty of other jobs that, again, exist purely because of capitalism, and that effort could be put towards more productive things. The stock market is the biggest one that I can't imagine I didn't think of earlier. Along with that goes banking, financial advisors and taxes.

For God's sake, read a book.

Anyone in a medical or biological field knows to be very critical as to where money for research has come, and if a person writing an artical is actively being paid money by a company to portray a drug or treatment in better light than was actually shown.

Well if everyone knows then what's the issue?

Without money though, there'd be no incentive beyond personal glory (which I don't think there'd be much of since no one would know who you were anyways), to spruce up results of drug therapies.

Great, so we just need people to work for free and be completely unaffected by and nonreliant on all material goods and services, and then we'll know they're honest.

Unless there's some complex psychological motivation that is. Gee, ok.

There'd also be no reason for manufacturers to make fake drugs, put brand-name labels on them, and sell them worldwide, while people die because they think they're taking their medication when they're not.

I don't even know where all this is coming from, but no, there would be. In fact there's more incentive to make non-working drugs when the government is in charge of development. Drugs are expensive to make. That's one of the principal reasons most drugs on the market are just rehashes of things that have already been developed, with slight trivial modifications. It doesn't help that regulation makes the development process more expensive and penalizes the development of legitimately new drugs.

Government isn't as worried about their brand name being associated with shoddy products, because they have guns and when all else fails they can use those to get their money, and not their products. A company can cheat. It can also fail. If a company fails people lose jobs. If a government fails people lose lives. It takes a lot more people down with it, because it can, and it will in the hopes of staying afloat as long as possible, even when its decisions have shown the people running it to be incompetent and dangerous. It's not even an issue of malevolence, it will do this more often than not exactly because it thinks its existence is in the best interest of the people.

There are two things that could happen if government took it upon itself to develop drugs. First, they could be as lazy as drug makers currently are (thanks to regulation) and only make the same things. Second, they could become wildly excessive and market drugs even if they weren't safe or effective.

The first is more plausible. Also, drugs would probably have a higher material cost, but even if they didn't they would still be funded coercively.

So, to all that, no.

[Cavernio]

"You're comparing the voluntary exchange of goods and services to involuntary labor."

Blackmail on a large scale is still blackmail. If your choice is to either work obscenely long hours for pitiful money compared to starving to death, you may consider it voluntary, but it can still be morally wrong. It most certainly isn't freedom. At first glance, yes, having the opportunity to live is better than nothing. But that company hinders bottom-up development that that community would have for itself.

"First of all, this is an example of why social science isn't science. Second of all, Economics isn't a social science, it's the study of the distribution of goods and services."

Let's not argue semantics.

"Redundancy isn't the difficulty with insurance companies. In fact it can't be. The existence of Coke doesn't make Pepsi more expensive, it makes it less expensive because of competitive pressure. Same thing with the existence of different insurance companies. The fact that there are a large number of people providing ostensibly the same service doesn't actually mean anything, and it certainly doesn't cost anyone anything extra."

I'm talking about actual work, not cost. Also, competition doesn't magically make producing anything cheaper except through motivation...to get more work done for cheaper.

"As for your last complaint, I don't even know. There are a lot of services that aren't payed for directly by the people that use them. Isn't this something you're trying to pass of as a virtue of centrally organized economics? Their care is payed for, nobody cares if it's directly or not, it's completely absurd to claim that no service is being provided here."

How not astute of you to not figure out any of the points I was trying to make there. 1) That insurance takes money from people when they may not get anything in return except for peace of mind is my way of saying that people, en masse, accept taxation, which is what a lot of people who support capitalism seem to despise most. For these people, their thinking is backwards because that tax would not even be necessary if it weren't for capitalism. 2) The fact that nobody cares whether their care is paid directly for or not is irrelevant. The fact that it is not means that there is extra work being made when there doesn't need to be. 'Busy work' is only good when the person wants to do it, in which case it's called art. 3) I specifically made the beginning sentence in my next paragraph explain my use of 'no service being provided'.

"It doesn't formally matter whether or not people work more, if they do it of their own free will."

OMG, but a capitalist system plays with someone's will to do things! It specifically adds an external motivator, money. It creates external motvation that's designed to 'out-motivate' one's own internal motivation in order to produce more goods and services. That's ****ing coersion!!!! I want to do things because of my own internal motivation, not money. Please tell me how this is wrong. God, it is totally impossible to break your perfect image of capitalism, because of how you define free will! You are specifically saying that whatever someone does in capitalism is always that person's free will. I will again point out that such a system easily uses blackmail, that when someone is blackmailed, they are freely given a choice between 2 unpleasent things. ****, anyone who's ever had a job where they had to do something they thought was wrong or else quit, knows what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that capitalism always does this, so don't bother arguing that it will. Capitalism does, however, give people specific motivation to give the least they can while getting the most they can. Internal motivation doesn't do that, not unless you're emotionless, or full of spite and revenge: most people aren't. What's worse, is that people who claim things like you do about capitalism and the economy, have the gall to rub it in that that person has a totally free choice in what they do, and tell them that that's good. You know what else is free will?? Disobeying the law. However, somehow having laws which motivate people to do/not do specific things takes away free will. You know what? I'd much rather have law outlining what I should and shouldn't do, which I know and can fight if I choose to, rather than have a manipulative system of capitalism, where everything's apparently always for the best, and it's so convoluted, fighting it is impossible.

"What you're committing is basically something like a reverse broken window fallacy, which is kind of amazing. As if the mere existence of windows, by entailing the possibility of work for the cobbler and the glass maker and the baker, somehow represents a negative utility outcome. Good job, you're insane."

At least you understand me here. What capitalism does is motivate someone to be a baker, glass maker, or cobbler, regardless of whether they want to be or not. Just because it does this, it does not mean that no having capitalism takes away these opportunities. What it gives them is opportunity to do things besides those jobs, because they do not have to worry about the money side of things.

"Great, so we just need people to work for free and be completely unaffected by and nonreliant on all material goods and services, and then we'll know they're honest."

I'm aware of my views. I said as much when I said that I'm imaging something like everyone sharing in a children's book. At least though, when we're fighting over material goods, there's one less layer of **** to shift through.