Yeah, the main thing I dislike about capitalism is how weak our say is about the corruption. Like we can watch insurance companies fuck us on the daily and people will genuinely act like it's their divine right to minimize cost at the expense of human life, because it unironically is, we are reduced to the place of dogs. At least in a state run system (with a functional democracy underlying) you're anger can be manifested in a changing of the state. Getting a functional democracy going is also it's own impossible problem though...
It’s actually much worse in socialism because one entity controls literally everything. Corruption doesn’t disappear in a socialist system. It actually spreads faster and is more virulent because there is no separation of powers. Just imagine a CEO of everything and substitute it for your insurance company example.
I would also argue that democracy is inherently incompatible with socialism due to this extreme centralization of power. The proof lies with multiple failed experiments in the 20th century. Socialism isn’t some new, radical idea anymore. We know what late stage socialism looks like.
i would argue the exact opposite. socialism, in its best form, is more democratic than capitalism. socialism != a CEO that controls everything. you put strong democratic systems in place to prevent the CEO or dictator. your insurance company is controlled by all the workers rather than a CEO, and they get to make decisions about the business, etc. there are a ton of permutations for how socialism can function and many of them aren't what the red scare leads everybody to believe. the 20th century failures were more like dictatorships than socialism.
socialism is all about how you organize a business by giving workers control, rather than organizing with the employer/employee relationship in capitalism. the workers can vote for a CEO to make the big decisions if they want, or a creative director to design or whatever, but they can also have the power to fire that individual if they don't think they're doing a good job.
and to your point about centralized control — we already have that with a ton of industries in america. we already have it for the US military, etc. seeing capitalism as the free market and socialism as a planned economy is a false dichotomy.
Your whole argument isn’t grounded in reality or history.
”socialism, in its best form, is more democratic than capitalism. socialism != a CEO that controls everything… you put strong democratic systems in place to prevent the CEO or dictator.”
No, it is not more democratic than capitalism. You have one entity controlling all manufacturing and distribution. There is no competition. There are no other competing entities with competing powers. A free press doesn’t exist in a socialist state because there’s only a state press. There’s no independent press to check on the government and report back to the masses.
”your insurance company is controlled by all the workers rather than a CEO”
That’s called a small co-op, and that can exist in a capitalist system. That cannot exist in socialism because there’s only one entity, the state. Not even large co-ops that span more than one building can function like this
“the 20th century failures were more like dictatorships than socialism.”
This is a bad argument. Using your logic, I can say what we have now isn’t capitalism because we have lots of regulatory capture and corruption. “It’s more like cronyism.”
If we’re being honest. It’s still capitalism, just like all the failed experiments in the 20th century are still socialism. The reason why socialism devolves into communism is because of the extreme centralization of power.
“socialism is all about how you organize a business by giving workers control, rather than organizing with the employer/employee relationship in capitalism. the workers can vote for a CEO to make the big decisions if they want, or a creative director to design or whatever, but they can also have the power to fire that individual if they don't think they're doing a good job.”
No, it isn’t. That is idealist fantasy. It’s like saying in a democracy, the citizens vote on everything. We do not. The masses elect representatives to act as proxies. Similarly, in socialism the masses also have representatives or leaders. Why? Efficiency. Of course, this is a vector for corruption. Also, unlike in a capitalist system, there’s no competition to the state (no checks or balances from competing powers: private vs public), which greatly magnifies the effects of corruption.
“and to your point about centralized control — we already have that with a ton of industries in america. we already have it for the US military, etc. seeing capitalism as the free market and socialism as a planned economy is a false dichotomy.”
And to your point, I can come right back and say that capitalism can fix our current mess because what we have right now is not ideologically pure, theoretical capitalism /s
…just as you refuse to acknowledge the pile of failed 20th century collectivist experiments as socialist.
nice cherry picked rebuttal. you missed a big point that there are tons of variations of how socialism can work. i define socialism as a way to organize a business where the workers control the business. that isn't capitalism and yes, you're right, it's closer to a co-op. i define capitalism where an owner (or owners) control the business and they employee workers who have little or no control over the business. if we can't agree on those definitions then there's really no point in nitpicking each other's arguments.
Your accusation is really comical since your arguments are way more cherry picked than mine. I at least acknowledge that what we have right now is indeed capitalism despite the lack of ideological purity.
> you missed a big point that there are tons of variations of how socialism can work.
We've literally had over a hundred years of political experiments with socialism. I've gone over all the variations that have existed in real life, with the longest running experiments being North Korea and Cuba.
> i define socialism as a way to organize a business where the workers control the business
The reason why this doesn't work is logistics. It's already incredibly hard just to get that co-op concept working in small company. (I believe it barely worked with a packaging company.) It's near impossible to even get that working for a co-op with locations nationwide. Our so-called national co-ops run more as a public benefit corporations than your strict view of a co-op.
> i define capitalism where an owner (or owners) control the business and they employee workers who have little or no control over the business.
In a system where even workers can own pieces of a corporation, that black and white view doesn't survive; especially when workers can strike, just leave for another company, or better yet start their own business. It is much harder for proletariats to influence the socialist state, than it is for employees to influence their bosses because capitalist systems have competing powers
> if we can't agree on those definitions then there's really no point in nitpicking each other's arguments.
When your entire argument falls apart from “nitpicking”, it means that it’s weak. Your argument is weak because it completely ignores history. We've done the socialism experiment for over a 100 years now. Ideas don’t live in an ivory vacuum. They need to survive reality. What we’ve seen in the 20th century is socialism in reality. If you ever get a chance to read the founding declarations of communist states, they are very similar to your co-op idealism.
What Confucius, Marx, Paine, Plato, and even Smith all failed to realize is that humans will always find a way to cheat the system and subvert it for their own gain. In HN speak, "individual nodes will always seek to optimize their own efficiency, at the cost of the system as a whole". Corruption doesn't disappear when you switch to socialism. Every known system regardless of whether it's capitalism or socialism will always eventually fail ie hit late stage, unless you can completely neutralize the human propensity to hack everything. Capitalism and socialism are both poor, temporary bandaids. Capitalism is only slightly better because it offers more flexibility.
i never said that we don't have capitalism now "despite the lack of ideological purity." again, you're misrepresenting my argument to fit your own argument. it's very clear this is the system that we have in america.
"We've literally had over a hundred years of political experiments with socialism." again, you're cherry picking failure to fit your bias and you are also ignoring history (aka, in your own words, you have a weak argument). we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway. i already know that you're gonna argue that BuT nOrWaY iS cAPiTaLIsM!!, but that's not true. go look at norway's nearly 80% of wealth that is held in public ownership when you don't count housing...that is a very clear success in history. so, you're right, "What we’ve seen in the 20th century is socialism in reality." we've seen it work in reality and we've seen it fail in reality. in the same way that we've seen capitalism work in reality, and we've seen it fail in reality.
and again, cherry picking with the "i believe it barely worked with a packaging company" ignores the many, many countless examples where that organization model has worked and has proven to be more resilient than a capitalist enterprise. very weak argument, especially because you say "i believe" but you aren't sure because that it is a fact, you just offhandedly heard that or something? i would share more examples with you but you clearly have no desire to learn and just want to win an argument.
"Corruption doesn't disappear when you switch to socialism." you're right, but you're ignoring the fact that socialism, in it's right form, is a democratic system. maybe i'm too optimistic, but that knowledge is a lousy reason to not setup a system of democratic to safeguard against this truth. the ability to hack democracy is one of those questions that keep me up at night, and i see it as a challenge and problem to solve rather than something to cede to (which should get the HN crowd excited). clearly this truth of corruption is abused in capitalism and it's exacerbated since we don't have the safeguard of a democratic process to prevent these abuses. at least with socialism, there's democracy.
EDIT: also, based on your argument style, i think that you might say, "but you said that socialism is a cooperative model and not norway. GOTCHA!" if that's the case, then LOL because you're missing the point and proving that you're only trying to win an argument.
> ”I never said that we don't have capitalism now "despite the lack of ideological purity." again, you're misrepresenting my argument to fit your own argument.”
No, you didn’t say that, but you keep using similar logic to ignore all of the socialist messes in the 20th century ie “No, that’s not socialism. That’s a dictatorship.” I’m just showing you how ridiculous that argument is.
> “again, you're cherry picking failure to fit your bias and you are also ignoring history (aka, in your own words, you have a weak argument). we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway. i already know that you're gonna argue that BuT nOrWaY iS cAPiTaLIsM!!, but that's not true.”
I love how you keep accusing me of “cherry picking”, when you’re the one primarily doing it. For the record, there are only three Scandinavian countries (or four if you count Finland) while there are over 40 countries that were or are still socialist.
> “ we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway.”
Now you’re cherry picking one out of three countries, with a ridiculous point that is completely untrue.
Norway might have a well funded socialist program, but that’s different from having a socialist economic system.
“According to a 2018-report from Statistics Norway, ten per cent of the population in the country owned 60 per cent of the wealth. The one per cent richest in the country owned nearly 21 per cent of all the wealth.”
Countries with socialist economic systems also don’t have stock markets.
> ”go look at norway's nearly 80% of wealth that is held in public ownership when you don't count housing...that is a very clear success in history. so, you're right”
You’re proving my point for me that it’s ridiculous to call Norway socialist, and you’re being hypocritical for cherry picking.
Yes, it's totally reasonable to overlook an important fact to make your argument work /s
Real estate is a huge asset, and has been considered wealth for thousands of years.
> ”EDIT: also, based on your argument style, i think that you might say, "but you said that socialism is a cooperative model and not norway. GOTCHA!" if that's the case, then LOL because you're missing the point and proving that you're only trying to win an argument.”
I’m not missing any point. You're just ignoring facts. I also find it funny that you’re self aware of just how flawed your argument is. Yet you still can’t admit to being wrong. Co-operatives barely work in a single location, let alone scale up nationally. Also it’s really ironic how you can comfortably loosen your definition of socialism to cherry pick.
> ”we’ve seen it work in reality and we've seen it fail in reality.”
No, we haven’t. The Scandinavian countries are all capitalist systems.
> ”ignores the many, many countless examples where that organization model has worked and has proven to be more resilient than a capitalist enterprise.”
There are so few of them across several continents. Moreover, most if not all of them are tiny.
> ”I would share more examples with you but you clearly have no desire to learn and just want to win an argument.”
You mean that you’re going to cherry pick yet again, while continually accusing me of the same thing? There’s barely a thousand of them compared to millions of private businesses.
> “you’re right, but you're ignoring the fact that socialism, in it's right form, is a democratic system.”
That may be its “right” form in your mind, but that’s not how it evolves in reality due to the extreme centralization of power. Virtually all of them didn’t even incorporate voting for the masses into their governments.
> ”maybe i'm too optimistic, but that knowledge is a lousy reason to not setup a system of democratic to safeguard against this truth”
That knowledge is called studying history to avoid repeating the dozens of failures in the 20th century. Like I said, socialism is no longer a new experiment. We know what late stage socialism looks like, and how fast it takes to get there. For many countries, these systems couldn’t even last a 100 years.
> “the ability to hack democracy is one of those questions that keep me up at night, and i see it as a challenge and problem to solve rather than something to cede to (which should get the HN crowd excited).”
I am not ceding anything. You’re just ignoring a fundamental truth. Capitalism is flawed, but it’s still better than socialism because it handles corruption better due to its focus on decentralization by design.
> ”clearly this truth of corruption is abused in capitalism and it's exacerbated since we don't have the safeguard of a democratic process to prevent these abuses.”
You still haven’t countered my argument as to why corruption spreads much faster and is more pervasive in a socialist system as opposed to a capitalist one. If you need reminding why, it’s because socialist systems centralize power much more than capitalist systems. Essentially saying that it will just magically work is not a good argument.
> ”at least with socialism, there's democracy.”
Out of close to 50 socialist systems in the 20th century, only one of them was a democracy, and I don’t even think it lasted a year. What you wrote is baseless and untrue.
Yes, claiming that I’m ignorant and that you’re illiterate is a great counter argument just because you can’t respond to facts and history /s
If you can’t properly explain your position within HN comments, it means that you don’t really understand what you believe in or that it’s really flawed. No, I’m not emailing you. If there’s anyone who’s ignorant of anything in this discussion, it’s you. You have no knowledge of the history of socialism despite your claims. I’m confident that you don’t even fully understand what socialism is based on your comments.
You should probably re-read Animal Farm which is notable work from a notable socialist
> You should probably re-read Animal Farm which is notable work from a notable socialist
...about how Leninism and related systems, despite superficial rhetoric borrowed from socialism, were not socialism, and looped back around to be equivalent to the capitalism that socialists oppose. (And, more broadly, about how people in practice could continue to maintain faith in those and other systems in which the nominal ideals of a revolution were utterly betrayed by revolutionary leadership.)
I don’t like repeating myself in the same thread, but it is socialism. That’s how socialism evolves in the real world just like what we call capitalism isn’t a true free market and it has a lot of corporate welfare. If I were to use your same logic with capitalism, I would say “Let’s bring back capitalism because what we have now isn’t capitalism. Instead, it’s ‘chrony capitalism’ since it doesn’t match Adam Smith’s pure ideology“.
It’s a flawed argument that you guys keep parroting. Leninism is another word for late stage socialism.
Your comment also shows that you failed to read my previous comments. Why bother replying if you’re just going to ignore what I wrote?
All you've proven is the exact opposite. The facts and history are on my side. You're just parroting talking points from someone else who didn't study history. I've already destroyed your talking points, which is even more apparent given your reply
is animal farm where you get all your ideas about socialism? lol ok
it's clear that you're the one who doesn't know what socialism is. this is a pointless discussion and you have no idea what you're talking about and didn't really respond to any of my arguments in good faith. i'll say it again because it went over your head in my very first comment: state dictatorships with nationalized industries are not socialism.
i've been properly explaining my beliefs but you've just been misinterpreting my claims and ignoring what i say because you're bad at debating. it's impossible to argue with somebody who says that everything you say is wrong (despite the claims being true). it's beating somebody at an argument through gaslighting.
this is a waste of my time. i'm not putting in the effort to write my arguments better — this is like arguing with a racist about why the confederate flag is a hateful symbol.
All of your comments have no basis in fact, reality, or history. You should read more before you continue to comment on a subject that you know nothing about including Animal Farm. If you don’t have a good understanding of metaphor and allegory, just read the history behind it
Yeah, given your terrible arguments that would be you who doesn't have a good understanding. When you start relying on attacking people instead of arguments, that signals that you lost the argument and that your knowledge is both flawed and weak.
