Capitalism is destroying us.

[af_newbie]

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything. 
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

[1715412342]

1715412342

[Ronni889]

Tough times people 🏃

[mrcash02]

Ok, if it's so terrible to live in a Capitalist society you could donate all your stuff and go to Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela. They will enjoy a slave citizen like you, so proud of their system, working on their lands.

[coins4commies]

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything. 
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model. 

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies. 

[Ladysmith]

Capitalism only destroys those on the wrong end of the stick, those who don't understand the power they also have to use it to their advantage.

I think it is due to a horrible educational system. They essentially sell slavery to people and make it seem like going to work for someone else is the best thing you can do with your life, when becoming the boss, investing in smart assets and never going into debt is the key to "success," not understanding calculus and how to use semicolons. (depends on your line of business though).

If guess if you wanted to find a problem with capitalism, it would be that it's unsustainable in the long-term. The most profitable ventures are often not the most environmentally friendly or even healthy for human beings. Supply and demand doesn't take ethics into consideration and is sometimes cruel. Many profitable businesses are responsible for killing people- pharmaceutical industry, fertilizer business, tobacco, antibiotics (leading to antibiotic resistant bacteria). Maybe this is population weeding though who knows. Not enough good physical resources for everyone.



 

[af_newbie]

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.  You will be left with mediocre managers, doctors, lawyers and engineers,  and no entrepreneurs.  Is this the society you want to have?  Everyone as intelligent as your average cleaning lady?  There is no way this will work.

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

"As socialists, democratic socialists believe that the systemic issues of capitalism can only be solved by replacing the capitalist system with a socialist system—i.e. by replacing private ownership with social ownership of the means of production."

[Jet Cash]

You can't have capitalism without capital, and the banking elite has been sucking the capital out of companies, governments, pension funds and savers. Capitalism has been destroyed and replaced by debt, and that is the source of our current economic ills.

[coins4commies]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

[gegewojinnian18]

The world has begun to divide at two levels. Such problems in any field of any industry may be extinct in the future, or human beings are always selfish. This is a terrible reality. We must face it.

[TheBiochemist]

Suicide rates and depression are rising because of Capitalism.   Workers are getting screwed over, the wealth they create is stolen.


I know a lot of you, especially americans are brainwashed.

-Climate change is a direct result of a profit driven society, environment doesn't matter only the dollar
-"hurr durr socialism/communism never worked millions died hurr durr"  Capitalism has killed much more people directly with poverty, inability to afford healthcare, etc
-. Capitalism is nothing but slavery with a new name, owners of capital are the slave masters
-

If you think you create wealth as a worker, ask for more money or go work somewhere else where your "wealth creation skills" will be recognized.

If not, you can start your own company and create wealth for yourself.

Stop complaining about other people's wealth.  Fix yours.

Capitalism is the best, natural system to separate and reward people based on their skills.

Early in my engineering career, I recognized that I needed to go solo, so I quit after 2 years at a multinational company and was immediately hired as an independent consultant by their competitor and paid four times as much. Then I started my own consulting company which I sold 30 years later.

Don't be afraid to demand more money from the "evil capitalists" or better yet, become one.

Invest early, save as much as you can, live within your means, retire early and enjoy your life.

Whatever you do, don't complain.  Nobody likes lazy people who complain for no apparent reason.

Capitalism is not a good force, at least not any longer. It causes some to buy up medical companies with good cures and kill the medicine, just to protect older patents which has not yielded profit yet, money > medicine. Some also prevent curing dieases while there are expensive medicines that slows a disease down, money > life. We frac, use tar sand, drill oil at sea and devastate rain forests to export meat, money > environment. We work and work and most of the tax money goes to paying national dept interest and the military sector, money devastates our planet and creates a war machine to protect it. We must have better goals then this, when money is the goal, we only enter a state of cyclical consumption, things are simply made and thrown away over and over. A good society should not behave like this, it should stagnate and be maintained like anything else that has been created to its optimal state.

When privatization hit the health care sector and schools in my country it went to shit right away. Rich areas got better schools and hospitals instantly, leaving large groups with few teachers  and long health care waiting times in the poorer and more overpopulated areas.
Capitalism leads to corruption and violence on a grand scale. There is no dam room to start your own company, if 3 billion did that right now do you think they will have costumers??? Do you thing the system can support everyone to get rich from working?
NO, it is designed to make very few very rich and put the rest in day labor, going from pay check to pay check, your story is great but this feat can only be achieved by a very few, the economy is NOT growing, it is impossible for a company to grow without another LOOSING value, its just quick maths, simple facts

Resources today is being used to profit, even water are being used to make nice cloths and produce meat, while many have none to DRINK. This is insane, waste away water to create products that only a few % of humanity can afford or enjoy, when we run out of clean water, is capitalism still good? when we have no rain forests and massive amounts of pollution due to capitalistic interests and our atmosphere goes to crap, is it still good?

Anyhow capitalism will be what destroys the earth, we already behave like a virus for the earth and we are growing fast in numbers while the economy is stagnated = more poverty + depletion of resources.

[af_newbie]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

Workers will be deciding what the input costs are?  Are you nuts?

Production costs, as well as the prices of products, should be driven by the free market.  Any artificial tinkering with the economic forces only leads to more chaos down the road.  Your cooperatives will have to synch prices with other companies etc.  This eventually leads to central planning.  And we all know how this ends.

You need to have private ownership, otherwise, all smart people will pack and leave your little experiment.  And you will end up with morons who will run your factories to the ground.

I would not want to live in a society where I cannot own multiple properties, own shares in companies, and accumulate wealth.

Are you going to eliminate personal collections or say 50+ sports cars, or expensive art pieces? 

In the capitalist system, anyone can own Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon or Apple.  In your system, you will only own a share of the company where you work.  How would this make you rich or financially independent?  You will always depend on the other schmucks that own your company. 

Do you even have a basic financial education?

In your socialist system, financial mobility would not be possible.  It would be more like a feudal system where workers will be chained to their workplaces.  I don't even know how would this work.  You are born, you go to school, you graduate, you are given a share in a company and a job that goes with it and work there for the rest of your life?

Sounds like a utopia to me.  No sane person would want to follow the rules of your socialist system.

In the capitalist system, you have the freedom.  You can invest your hard earned money or spend it on useless gadgets.  You can change jobs, you can ask for more money, you can start companies, invent new products etc. 

[af_newbie]

Suicide rates and depression are rising because of Capitalism.   Workers are getting screwed over, the wealth they create is stolen.


I know a lot of you, especially americans are brainwashed.

-Climate change is a direct result of a profit driven society, environment doesn't matter only the dollar
-"hurr durr socialism/communism never worked millions died hurr durr"  Capitalism has killed much more people directly with poverty, inability to afford healthcare, etc
-. Capitalism is nothing but slavery with a new name, owners of capital are the slave masters
-

If you think you create wealth as a worker, ask for more money or go work somewhere else where your "wealth creation skills" will be recognized.

If not, you can start your own company and create wealth for yourself.

Stop complaining about other people's wealth.  Fix yours.

Capitalism is the best, natural system to separate and reward people based on their skills.

Early in my engineering career, I recognized that I needed to go solo, so I quit after 2 years at a multinational company and was immediately hired as an independent consultant by their competitor and paid four times as much. Then I started my own consulting company which I sold 30 years later.

Don't be afraid to demand more money from the "evil capitalists" or better yet, become one.

Invest early, save as much as you can, live within your means, retire early and enjoy your life.

Whatever you do, don't complain.  Nobody likes lazy people who complain for no apparent reason.

Capitalism is not a good force, at least not any longer. It causes some to buy up medical companies with good cures and kill the medicine, just to protect older patents which has not yielded profit yet, money > medicine. Some also prevent curing dieases while there are expensive medicines that slows a disease down, money > life. We frac, use tar sand, drill oil at sea and devastate rain forests to export meat, money > environment. We work and work and most of the tax money goes to paying national dept interest and the military sector, money devastates our planet and creates a war machine to protect it. We must have better goals then this, when money is the goal, we only enter a state of cyclical consumption, things are simply made and thrown away over and over. A good society should not behave like this, it should stagnate and be maintained like anything else that has been created to its optimal state.

When privatization hit the health care sector and schools in my country it went to shit right away. Rich areas got better schools and hospitals instantly, leaving large groups with few teachers  and long health care waiting times in the poorer and more overpopulated areas.
Capitalism leads to corruption and violence on a grand scale. There is no dam room to start your own company, if 3 billion did that right now do you think they will have costumers??? Do you thing the system can support everyone to get rich from working?
NO, it is designed to make very few very rich and put the rest in day labor, going from pay check to pay check, your story is great but this feat can only be achieved by a very few, the economy is NOT growing, it is impossible for a company to grow without another LOOSING value, its just quick maths, simple facts

Resources today is being used to profit, even water are being used to make nice cloths and produce meat, while many have none to DRINK. This is insane, waste away water to create products that only a few % of humanity can afford or enjoy, when we run out of clean water, is capitalism still good? when we have no rain forests and massive amounts of pollution due to capitalistic interests and our atmosphere goes to crap, is it still good?

Anyhow capitalism will be what destroys the earth, we already behave like a virus for the earth and we are growing fast in numbers while the economy is stagnated = more poverty + depletion of resources.

The capitalist system is the best system invented by humans.  Protection of the environment and natural resources should be the job of the government.  The rules should be set by the government agencies not ingrained in the "economic system".

[Balthazar]

s/Capitalism/Capitolism/ig

Socialism kills innovation, it demotivates people, it kills any progress.  It equalizes the outcomes.

Just to be honest, stupidity of the government has nothing to do with its declared economical policy.
Just compare china to north korea or japan to mexica, and you will see what do I mean.

[TECSHARE]

s/Capitalism/Capitolism/ig

Socialism kills innovation, it demotivates people, it kills any progress.  It equalizes the outcomes.

Just to be honest, stupidity of the government has nothing to do with its declared economical policy.
Just compare china to north korea or japan to mexica, and you will see what do I mean.

Eh, that is not completely true. Yes stupidity can corruption can exist under any form of policy, Socialism and Communism just make it exceptionally easy for them.

[coins4commies]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

Workers will be deciding what the input costs are?  Are you nuts?

Production costs, as well as the prices of products, should be driven by the free market.  Any artificial tinkering with the economic forces only leads to more chaos down the road.  Your cooperatives will have to synch prices with other companies etc.  This eventually leads to central planning.  And we all know how this ends.

Cooperative prices are still driven by the market.  Executives decide on salaries and base those decisions on market analysis.  All of those processes still exist in a cooperatives, its just that the decisions are made via democracy (or elected peer executives beholden to the workers) instead of dictatorship.  How does this lead to central planning? 

You need to have private ownership, otherwise, all smart people will pack and leave your little experiment.  And you will end up with morons who will run your factories to the ground.

There are plenty of very successful worker cooperatives that not only have not been run to the ground, but lead their industry.  I've been fascinated with Mondragon in Spain.   Why would smart people leave because there is no external ownership?  As you stated, any moron can own a captalist company with no knowledge of how the company functions.  How is that better for the smart people in the company?

I would not want to live in a society where I cannot own multiple properties, own shares in companies, and accumulate wealth.

Are you going to eliminate personal collections or say 50+ sports cars, or expensive art pieces? 

Why would we limit what people can buy?  People can buy whatever they want. 

In the capitalist system, anyone can own Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon or Apple.  In your system, you will only own a share of the company where you work.  How would this make you rich or financially independent?  You will always depend on the other schmucks that own your company. 

You are paid more because there is no profit being extracted from your work.  If you don't like your company, you go to a company with more motivated workers and make more money.  The thing is, when people work for their own company, they tend to work harder than they would when working for the man.  What you can't do is earn a fortune off of other peoples' work without working at all.

 If your goal is to earn "passive income" or become rich through something other than work, then no, this system is not for you and you will be absolutely miserable. 

Do you even have a basic financial education?

In your socialist system, financial mobility would not be possible.  It would be more like a feudal system where workers will be chained to their workplaces.  I don't even know how would this work.  You are born, you go to school, you graduate, you are given a share in a company and a job that goes with it and work there for the rest of your life?

Nothing about this says you have to work for one company for your entire life.  Also, nothing is stopping you from moving up in your company.  Nothing is stopping your company from doing something great and making you a fortune .  The only difference is that you have to work to be part of the rewards and not working disqualifies you from the rewards.  We're talking about a system that incentivizes work.

In the capitalist system, you have the freedom.  You can invest your hard earned money or spend it on useless gadgets.  You can change jobs, you can ask for more money, you can start companies, invent new products etc. 

Nothing about the system I have described would stop you from doing any of this.

[Spendulus]

s/Capitalism/Capitolism/ig

Socialism kills innovation, it demotivates people, it kills any progress.  It equalizes the outcomes.

Just to be honest, stupidity of the government has nothing to do with its declared economical policy.
Just compare china to north korea or japan to mexica, and you will see what do I mean.

Eh, that is not completely true. Yes stupidity can corruption can exist under any form of policy, Socialism and Communism just make it exceptionally easy for them.

Basically you get to choose between the sociopaths being in business or in government. Pick your poison.

[af_newbie]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

Workers will be deciding what the input costs are?  Are you nuts?

Production costs, as well as the prices of products, should be driven by the free market.  Any artificial tinkering with the economic forces only leads to more chaos down the road.  Your cooperatives will have to synch prices with other companies etc.  This eventually leads to central planning.  And we all know how this ends.

Cooperative prices are still driven by the market.  Executives decide on salaries and base those decisions on market analysis.  All of those processes still exist in a cooperatives, its just that the decisions are made via democracy (or elected peer executives beholden to the workers) instead of dictatorship.  How does this lead to central planning?  

You need to have private ownership, otherwise, all smart people will pack and leave your little experiment.  And you will end up with morons who will run your factories to the ground.

There are plenty of very successful worker cooperatives that not only have not been run to the ground, but lead their industry.  I've been fascinated with Mondragon in Spain.   Why would smart people leave because there is no external ownership?  As you stated, any moron can own a captalist company with no knowledge of how the company functions.  How is that better for the smart people in the company?

I would not want to live in a society where I cannot own multiple properties, own shares in companies, and accumulate wealth.

Are you going to eliminate personal collections or say 50+ sports cars, or expensive art pieces?  

Why would we limit what people can buy?  People can buy whatever they want.  

In the capitalist system, anyone can own Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon or Apple.  In your system, you will only own a share of the company where you work.  How would this make you rich or financially independent?  You will always depend on the other schmucks that own your company.  

You are paid more because there is no profit being extracted from your work.  If you don't like your company, you go to a company with more motivated workers and make more money.  The thing is, when people work for their own company, they tend to work harder than they would when working for the man.  What you can't do is earn a fortune off of other peoples' work without working at all.

 If your goal is to earn "passive income" or become rich through something other than work, then no, this system is not for you and you will be absolutely miserable.  

Do you even have a basic financial education?

In your socialist system, financial mobility would not be possible.  It would be more like a feudal system where workers will be chained to their workplaces.  I don't even know how would this work.  You are born, you go to school, you graduate, you are given a share in a company and a job that goes with it and work there for the rest of your life?

Nothing about this says you have to work for one company for your entire life.  Also, nothing is stopping you from moving up in your company.  Nothing is stopping your company from doing something great and making you a fortune .  The only difference is that you have to work to be part of the rewards and not working disqualifies you from the rewards.  We're talking about a system that incentivizes work.

In the capitalist system, you have the freedom.  You can invest your hard earned money or spend it on useless gadgets.  You can change jobs, you can ask for more money, you can start companies, invent new products etc.  

Nothing about the system I have described would stop you from doing any of this.

You do not understand how the capitalist system works.  I am guessing you have never attended a shareholder's meeting.

You just want the free stuff, but in the end, you will keep the system operating the way it is operating today, i.e. owners decide what is best for the company.

You just want to change the ownership.  From rich to poor.

I am telling you that there is a reason why most poor people are poor and why most rich people are rich.  You want to re-distribute the wealth with a stroke of the pen ignoring the underlying root causes.

BTW, how do you become the owner in multiple companies in your socialist system, i.e. how do you move from company to company?  Buy shares?  I thought you are against private ownership?

I don't get the system you are describing, and I think you do not get it either.  Do you want to start co-operatives?  Go ahead, who is stopping you.  But don't force others to subscribe to your ill-devised business plans.

[coins4commies]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

Workers will be deciding what the input costs are?  Are you nuts?

Production costs, as well as the prices of products, should be driven by the free market.  Any artificial tinkering with the economic forces only leads to more chaos down the road.  Your cooperatives will have to synch prices with other companies etc.  This eventually leads to central planning.  And we all know how this ends.

Cooperative prices are still driven by the market.  Executives decide on salaries and base those decisions on market analysis.  All of those processes still exist in a cooperatives, its just that the decisions are made via democracy (or elected peer executives beholden to the workers) instead of dictatorship.  How does this lead to central planning?  

You need to have private ownership, otherwise, all smart people will pack and leave your little experiment.  And you will end up with morons who will run your factories to the ground.

There are plenty of very successful worker cooperatives that not only have not been run to the ground, but lead their industry.  I've been fascinated with Mondragon in Spain.   Why would smart people leave because there is no external ownership?  As you stated, any moron can own a captalist company with no knowledge of how the company functions.  How is that better for the smart people in the company?

I would not want to live in a society where I cannot own multiple properties, own shares in companies, and accumulate wealth.

Are you going to eliminate personal collections or say 50+ sports cars, or expensive art pieces?  

Why would we limit what people can buy?  People can buy whatever they want.  

In the capitalist system, anyone can own Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon or Apple.  In your system, you will only own a share of the company where you work.  How would this make you rich or financially independent?  You will always depend on the other schmucks that own your company.  

You are paid more because there is no profit being extracted from your work.  If you don't like your company, you go to a company with more motivated workers and make more money.  The thing is, when people work for their own company, they tend to work harder than they would when working for the man.  What you can't do is earn a fortune off of other peoples' work without working at all.

 If your goal is to earn "passive income" or become rich through something other than work, then no, this system is not for you and you will be absolutely miserable.  

Do you even have a basic financial education?

In your socialist system, financial mobility would not be possible.  It would be more like a feudal system where workers will be chained to their workplaces.  I don't even know how would this work.  You are born, you go to school, you graduate, you are given a share in a company and a job that goes with it and work there for the rest of your life?

Nothing about this says you have to work for one company for your entire life.  Also, nothing is stopping you from moving up in your company.  Nothing is stopping your company from doing something great and making you a fortune .  The only difference is that you have to work to be part of the rewards and not working disqualifies you from the rewards.  We're talking about a system that incentivizes work.

In the capitalist system, you have the freedom.  You can invest your hard earned money or spend it on useless gadgets.  You can change jobs, you can ask for more money, you can start companies, invent new products etc.  

Nothing about the system I have described would stop you from doing any of this.

You do not understand how the capitalist system works.  I am guessing you have never attended a shareholder's meeting.

You just want the free stuff, but in the end, you will keep the system operating the way it is operating today, i.e. owners decide what is best for the company.

You just want to change the ownership.  From rich to poor.

I am telling you that there is a reason why most poor people are poor and why most rich people are rich.  You want to re-distribute the wealth with a stroke of the pen ignoring the underlying root causes.

BTW, how do you become the owner in multiple companies in your socialist system, i.e. how do you move from company to company?  Buy shares?  I thought you are against private ownership?

I don't get the system you are describing, and I think you do not get it either.  Do you want to start co-operatives?  Go ahead, who is stopping you.  But don't force others to subscribe to your ill-devised business plans.

I am trying to change ownership from rich to workers, not necessarily to the poor.  The working class should have never been poor to begin with.  Capitalism is the root cause of a poor working class.  

You could own multiple companies by working for multiple companies.  Your share of ownership is based on your share of the work.  If you leave a company or stop working, you no longer own that company.  When you are hired and start working, you own shares of the company based on the proportion of work you have done. There cannot be a mandated way for this to happen and each cooperative decides on the bylaws democratically.  

The point is that ownership is connected to labor and it extends from the idea that people are not free if their labor productivity belongs to someone else.  

I don't get the system you are describing, and I think you do not get it either.  Do you want to start co-operatives?  Go ahead, who is stopping you.  But don't force others to subscribe to your ill-devised business plans.

Yes I want people to be able to start cooperatives but is very difficult for many reasons.  I want tax reform and programs like the Marcora laws that were successfully used in Italy to level the playing field for cooperatives to begin.  There are already cooperatives everywhere but other than Emilia-Romagna (30% of their GDP), where these laws were implemented, its just unlikely workers in a sector will find each other and the funds at the opportune time.  They usually only start because of charity or collectively wealthy workers.  

The mondragon cooperative was only able to begin because the local leader of the catholic church realized his parishioners were being oppressed by capitalism and the church put in the seed money to get it up and running.  

Legally, worker cooperatives are a pain in the ass for disputes/taxes and most of the working class has no idea they are even an option.  People generally want to own their own company but just don't think its possible.  I want people to have the choice. I haven't said anything about forcing anything on anyone.  If people choose to vote for a dictator to run the company because that person is very smart fine.  If they choose to pay that person 3,000 times more than them then that is fine too.  Its just about democracy.



 

[hipuzid]

Suicide rates and depression are rising because of Capitalism.   Workers are getting screwed over, the wealth they create is stolen.


I know a lot of you, especially americans are brainwashed.

-Climate change is a direct result of a profit driven society, environment doesn't matter only the dollar
-"hurr durr socialism/communism never worked millions died hurr durr"  Capitalism has killed much more people directly with poverty, inability to afford healthcare, etc
-. Capitalism is nothing but slavery with a new name, owners of capital are the slave masters
-

And we can see by examples how good socials countries are doing, and how many people are moving to those from those rich slavery capitalist countries

[af_newbie]

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.

...
I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it.  Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian,  it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.  
...

You are for it because you don't understand it.

If you lived under the socialist system you would understand it.

Humans are all different, different skills, personalities, and ambitions.  When you equalize the outcomes, you kill incentives to work harder than the guy next to you.  This leads to poor productivity, and the economy eventually collapses on its own weight.

Smart people leave and go elsewhere and you are left with idiots who cannot tie their own shoes never mind run a complex economic system.

Be careful what you wish for.

Where did you get the idea that socialists want to equalize outcomes?  Definitely not in my platform or any of the other links I posted.  Sounds like the same old straw man and further affirms my quoted point.  I argue for democratic socialism, post platforms, and ideological explanations and capitalists STILL argue against the stalinist model.  

People who don't understand socialism also seem to believe in a one dimensional political compass which means they are unaware of about half of all political ideologies.  

You are even not sure about what you really want.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production (including wealth) are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government"

If you own the factory collectively with all the drunks that don't show up for work, but who control the factory as much as you, no matter how hard you work, how is this not the equality of outcome?

Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

Sooner or later you end up stratifying the socialist society and you end up either with a centralized system with a Politburo at the top or a decentralized commune style of Columbian guerrillas.

Guess what?  It takes intelligence to accumulate wealth, make it productive and grow.  If you just distribute (by confiscation) the wealth owned by capitalists to people who know nothing about the capital, you are going to waste a lot of resources and in the end, everybody will be hungry and willing to rob their neighbor or sell their 14-old daughter for a bag of rice.  Check out Venezuela, or Cuba.

You really have not thought it through.

There is a reason why most rich people are intelligent and most poor people are simpletons.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 

You are advocating for the destruction of a social structure that worked for hundreds of years and replacing it with your idea of a fair system?  How are you going to reward entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers and punish lazy workers who screw up the costly production lines?

Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  

Are you going to force brilliant surgeons to work for minimum wage (decided by the hospital maintenance workers)?  Are you going to kill or imprison all the intellectuals?  If not, your system will fall apart as the intellectuals will expose the obvious inefficiencies and faults in it.  No brilliant doctor or engineer would want voluntarily stay in your system.  Why? because they will not be able to start their own businesses and run them the way they envision them.

If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  

Who is going to invest in your made-up system if you eliminate the private ownership?

What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

Workers will be deciding what the input costs are?  Are you nuts?

Production costs, as well as the prices of products, should be driven by the free market.  Any artificial tinkering with the economic forces only leads to more chaos down the road.  Your cooperatives will have to synch prices with other companies etc.  This eventually leads to central planning.  And we all know how this ends.

Cooperative prices are still driven by the market.  Executives decide on salaries and base those decisions on market analysis.  All of those processes still exist in a cooperatives, its just that the decisions are made via democracy (or elected peer executives beholden to the workers) instead of dictatorship.  How does this lead to central planning?  

You need to have private ownership, otherwise, all smart people will pack and leave your little experiment.  And you will end up with morons who will run your factories to the ground.

There are plenty of very successful worker cooperatives that not only have not been run to the ground, but lead their industry.  I've been fascinated with Mondragon in Spain.   Why would smart people leave because there is no external ownership?  As you stated, any moron can own a captalist company with no knowledge of how the company functions.  How is that better for the smart people in the company?

I would not want to live in a society where I cannot own multiple properties, own shares in companies, and accumulate wealth.

Are you going to eliminate personal collections or say 50+ sports cars, or expensive art pieces?  

Why would we limit what people can buy?  People can buy whatever they want.  

In the capitalist system, anyone can own Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon or Apple.  In your system, you will only own a share of the company where you work.  How would this make you rich or financially independent?  You will always depend on the other schmucks that own your company.  

You are paid more because there is no profit being extracted from your work.  If you don't like your company, you go to a company with more motivated workers and make more money.  The thing is, when people work for their own company, they tend to work harder than they would when working for the man.  What you can't do is earn a fortune off of other peoples' work without working at all.

 If your goal is to earn "passive income" or become rich through something other than work, then no, this system is not for you and you will be absolutely miserable.  

Do you even have a basic financial education?

In your socialist system, financial mobility would not be possible.  It would be more like a feudal system where workers will be chained to their workplaces.  I don't even know how would this work.  You are born, you go to school, you graduate, you are given a share in a company and a job that goes with it and work there for the rest of your life?

Nothing about this says you have to work for one company for your entire life.  Also, nothing is stopping you from moving up in your company.  Nothing is stopping your company from doing something great and making you a fortune .  The only difference is that you have to work to be part of the rewards and not working disqualifies you from the rewards.  We're talking about a system that incentivizes work.

In the capitalist system, you have the freedom.  You can invest your hard earned money or spend it on useless gadgets.  You can change jobs, you can ask for more money, you can start companies, invent new products etc.  

Nothing about the system I have described would stop you from doing any of this.

You do not understand how the capitalist system works.  I am guessing you have never attended a shareholder's meeting.

You just want the free stuff, but in the end, you will keep the system operating the way it is operating today, i.e. owners decide what is best for the company.

You just want to change the ownership.  From rich to poor.

I am telling you that there is a reason why most poor people are poor and why most rich people are rich.  You want to re-distribute the wealth with a stroke of the pen ignoring the underlying root causes.

BTW, how do you become the owner in multiple companies in your socialist system, i.e. how do you move from company to company?  Buy shares?  I thought you are against private ownership?

I don't get the system you are describing, and I think you do not get it either.  Do you want to start co-operatives?  Go ahead, who is stopping you.  But don't force others to subscribe to your ill-devised business plans.

I am trying to change ownership from rich to workers, not necessarily to the poor.  The working class should have never been poor to begin with.  Capitalism is the root cause of a poor working class.  

You could own multiple companies by working for multiple companies.  Your share of ownership is based on your share of the work.  If you leave a company or stop working, you no longer own that company.  When you are hired and start working, you own shares of the company based on the proportion of work you have done. There cannot be a mandated way for this to happen and each cooperative decides on the bylaws democratically.  

The point is that ownership is connected to labor and it extends from the idea that people are not free if their labor productivity belongs to someone else.  

I don't get the system you are describing, and I think you do not get it either.  Do you want to start co-operatives?  Go ahead, who is stopping you.  But don't force others to subscribe to your ill-devised business plans.

Yes I want people to be able to start cooperatives but is very difficult for many reasons.  I want tax reform and programs like the Marcora laws that were successfully used in Italy to level the playing field for cooperatives to begin.  There are already cooperatives everywhere but other than Emilia-Romagna (30% of their GDP), where these laws were implemented, its just unlikely workers in a sector will find each other and the funds at the opportune time.  They usually only start because of charity or collectively wealthy workers.  

The mondragon cooperative was only able to begin because the local leader of the catholic church realized his parishioners were being oppressed by capitalism and the church put in the seed money to get it up and running.  

Legally, worker cooperatives are a pain in the ass for disputes/taxes and most of the working class has no idea they are even an option.  People generally want to own their own company but just don't think its possible.  I want people to have the choice. I haven't said anything about forcing anything on anyone.  If people choose to vote for a dictator to run the company because that person is very smart fine.  If they choose to pay that person 3,000 times more than them then that is fine too.  Its just about democracy.

The root cause is not the capitalist system.  The root cause the workers are poor are the workers.

In the capitalist system, you can move up on the social ladder.  

In the socialist system, there is no ladder to climb so everyone is poor.

Like I said before, understand both systems before you propose a ridiculous plan to make everyone poor.