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Leftist Discussion Thread

this thread has strayed so far from the original point

Thats inevitable for pretty much every thread. So let's bring it back on track. "Leftist" and "liberal" are not the same thing, and neither are "communism", "socialism", "authoritarianism", and "nationalization (state capitalism)". So, who thinks it's time for capitalism to be retired? Free markets are not some unique trait to capitalism, they're a completely independent concept that can exist regardless of the economic system used. Free markets also require regulation to stay free, otherwise things ultimately drift towards regulatory capture and monopolies, with those things occurring fastest under capitalism. Over-regulation can certainly be a problem, but the idea that no regulation is some kind of panacea is absurd and provably wrong (ditto with supply side economics / trickle down / Reaganomics).

Being a libertarian, i think what needs to happen is that the government should incentivize corporations to change to/be created as co-ops (socialism). An authoritarian decree to get rid of capitalism hasn't worked yet, as human nature (greed, lust for power, etc) has always made things stop at nationalization (state capitalism).


Discuss.
 
One issue I have is the predefinition of so many terms, none of which represent me in totality. I would say I'm for communism but none I've seen applied are done correctly so I avoid using that term. While I'm about as left as a person can get in a lot of my views I would be very right in some views.

I've come to hate the labels simply because if I take one, immediately I am picking sides, which adds to the ever increasing rift we should be working on closing.

There is a common occurrence here, when someone says they believe ABC, others will tell them they must be alphabet'ers which makes them anti calligraphy. (I'm trying to draw a poor parallel). If we could avoid categorizing each other and throwing poo at the other side there is a lot of good input coming from both sides.

The hard part is reading the radical opinions of others with an open mind, not reading it through judgement looking for the crack in their theory. Maybe it's just me but I do learn a lot more about the people that hold these difficult to understand beliefs.
 
A classless society would just get invaded IMO

What makes you think that? Explain your reasoning on how having a multi-tied society makes one less likely to be invaded, or how having only a single class (in this case, "US citizens") would make it more likely to be invaded?
 
Hey my favorite elston gun tune might be' on a rainy day afternoon'

Bummed that YT figured that out. Used to be a way to find some rare stuff.

I always loved how elston, while you might think he is a super Lib like Neil young, kept his political views to himself or is pretty apolitical in general.
 
More on point I see society has done well. We used capitalism (as flawed as it is) to get society to the tipping point. If we try to continue with capitalism we can only fight, there is no longer abundant untapped resourses and an under educated exploitable population to snare with the phantom idea of loans and interest.

We made a mistake when we allowed money to grow with interest despite the labour that produced it not growing at all. For example, when we declare a holiday, interest does not take vacation, so everyone with a debt still pays despite not working to earn. The money market still earns despite not working. This is the fundamental flaw with capitalism. We allow money (which represents labour) to grow on its own without added labour from the money holder, instead the poor are allowed to touch and play with some of the money of the wealthy, in exchange we pay them for doing nothing. The poor have become educated and if we keep doing the same thing it will developed into war fairly quickly.

We need a new way of enticing people to work that doesn't allow abuse of others like wealth does. So in this area I am about as left as a man can get. I don't think we need money at all, in reality I barely touch it and it moves on its own while many non working members of our society take tiny shares to stay alive. (By non working I mean non producing, the money markets only produce wealth for a few and create vast poverty for the many).

We need to view some radical new ideas and discuss them without the labels and see if we agree on more than we think. I see solutions, some are radical, if we take them to extremes I see a much better world but it isn't without massive risks. Never before in recorded history have we had so much, yet felt so frightened about the frailty of our situation. I see a world where the glass is not half full and shrinking, but overflowing with unharnessed potential. My position is outside of the box a bit but it may bring lasting peace and we can become the human race.
 
What makes you think that? Explain your reasoning on how having a multi-tied society makes one less likely to be invaded, or how having only a single class (in this case, "US citizens") would make it more likely to be invaded?
A true classless society wouldn't have a military
 
So now the military is a class of society? Humph. Always wondered why my girl's lil' bro was a dick to me, apparently since he's a marine he's in the caste, errrrr, I mean class above me.

Warrior caste fer lyfe dewds.

Everyone knows that the Soviet Union had no military, that's why we invaded and overthrew them.
 
I know but there's no reason I can see that would demand a classless society to have no military, and that's the point I'm trying to make. A classless society can still have a division of labor, and in fact it must in order to function. Everyone would simply do the job they're best at and get compensated equally for it.

One might argue, oh why work so hard to be a cosmonaut or a doctor if you don't get paid more for it? Well if someone is becoming a doctor because of the big money involved, I don't want them to be my doctor.
 
One might argue, oh why work so hard to be a cosmonaut or a doctor if you don't get paid more for it? Well if someone is becoming a doctor because of the big money involved, I don't want them to be my doctor.

This is very true. It is also true when you think of your food. The quality of food the market has is vastly inferior to what it could be if the people making or designing food loved their job and we're not constantly trying to make food cheaper and cheaper to compete for money.
 
People weren't created equal no, but everyone should have equal opportunities and nobody should be repressed or have less opportunities because of traits they were born into or otherwise can do nothing about.
 
It goes against basic human nature. Not everyone is created equal. You underestimate the quest for power.

I agree with the first and last sentence. I don't think notions of equal or unequal really exist. All is moot at birth. In some sense at least.

But, I do think the quest for power is a huge, perhaps primary occupation for humans. Especially male humans. The idea of money isn't so much about the resources one can acquire but the incredible power one has over the resources, and therefore the future, of others. The ability to control the destiny of others removes many of the variables that arise to disrupt your own future. Holding more of the key to everything is the seat of power.

I think there is merit to the notion of the utility monster, which imo we can see arising in capitalism. Simplifying it, the system implies that $100 is going to be of more benefit to 1 person than $1 each is for 100 people which gives a decent summation of the paradox of capitalism. The more money you have, the greater the power you wield and therefore the more utility money has for you. Capitalism is not a system that will give rise to equitable wealth distribution. It is simply the system that generates the greatest total wealth.
 
I think there is merit to the notion of the utility monster, which imo we can see arising in capitalism. Simplifying it, the system implies that $100 is going to be of more benefit to 1 person than $1 each is for 100 people which gives a decent summation of the paradox of capitalism. The more money you have, the greater the power you wield and therefore the more utility money has for you. Capitalism is not a system that will give rise to equitable wealth distribution. It is simply the system that generates the greatest total wealth.

I am no fan of unregulated free market capitalism, but I think you have misunderstood the concept of a utility monster. The utility monster is a theoretical problem for utilitarian ethical theory because the theory (generally) says what is good is to maximise happiness, the idea is there could be some people who derive considerably more happiness from some important good than others, so that giving them more of something we ordinarily think should be distributed more evenly would promote the most happiness, leading to counterintuitive ethical conclusions.

Economics weighs all equally ordinally ranked preferenes between different individuals equally, and the principle of declining margnal utility implies the opposite conclusion to the one you have drawn from the utility monster example. Capitalism can be justified without appeal to utilitarianism, so it makes more sense (to me) to level economic criticisms at it, or to relate examples from ethical theory to empirical data which actually shows that capitalism leads to undesirable outcomes under said ethical theory. Of course, there is a sense in which you have attempted to do the latter (minus the empirical evidence), but I don't think it makes a great deal of sense to argue contrary to basic economic theory on the basis of an abstract thought experiment which is mostly relevant to normative ethics. This is coming from someone who believes that philosophy generally, and ethics in particular, should play a considerably larger role in public decision making than it currently does.

I think a more sound criticism of economic theory as it relates to capitalism is that if there is only 100 units of wealth to be distributed between ten people, a situation where one person gets all 100 units is regarded as being as Pareto efficient as a situation where each person gets ten units (assuming no units were redistributed by taking them from someone who previously held more); so long as nobody is directly made worse off in either scenario (i.e. they do not end up with less wealth than they started with), basic economic theory lacks the resources to say that one of these states of affairs is more desirable than the other. Even more absurdly, if one person already has all 100 units, to redistribute these units more equitably would result in a Pareto inferior state of affairs than one in which that person retains all their wealth.
 
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