Ferk @ Ferk @lemmy.ml

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You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.

There's a reason: you do need someone to take charge of management tasks and redistribution. Your argument would be like saying that there's no reason to elect public officials, nor for the workers to allow them to take the roles they take and "accumulate profits" (they would only accumulate the profits that the State/Workers allow, btw, because the redistribution includes them, and it has to also be overseed / agreed by State/Workers).

You can call the owners "administrators" if you want.. but that's more of a semantic problem. Because at the end of the day, it's not the document of ownership what really matters. I would not mind if you call me "administrator" of my building if it were the case that even though I have a paper that says I'm own it, I'm were to not be allowed to execute changes to it without the agreement of the rest of the people living on it.

And yes, it might be that there's no competition (although that does not necessarily have to be true), but this is why I was telling you that the problem is NOT that capitalism evolves into a monopoly, the problem is making sure the owner has specific obligations and responsibilities that must be always aligned with State/Worker.

Again, I wanna keep things short so I don’t want to go one by one through your points just yet, because the comments are becoming long enough as they are, and I feel most (all?) of what you wrote is not in conflict with my point and it only relates to superfluous misinterpretations of what I was meaning to communicate. I don’t want to engage in double guesses trying to understand what you think that I think and why you think the point you are making challenges mine.

The feeling is mutual actually, to me it looks like it's you the one with pre-existing notions and assumptions about private ownership.

I'll try to keep it short, so I won't respond to most of your text (after all, I fell you also didn't really respond to most of my questions), and I'll just take on your last suggestion:

Why don’t you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why it’s a good thing, and why it will come to be.

Sure, but the Utopia I was presenting depends on your hypothetical Communist society, since the whole point was to test whether that one could work while preserving private ownership (as I already stated before).

The Utopic society I'm proposing is equivalent to yours, with a main change:

There will be people who are designated as owners of the means of production. And what this means is that they will be held responsible for any malpractice associated to the use of the production. So they will have the responsibility of overseeing it and organizing the distribution tasks needed following the rules mandated by State and Workers, and they will be, at the same time, overseed by a system of control that is fully transparent and for which the people can openly monitor every single action that is taken by the owner. I have some ideas on how this could work.. like making it technically impossible for transactions to be valid without keeping records of them in a publicly held database that is distributed (P2P, maybe blockchain). This P2P community held database will be the sole authority in determining who should receive what, and it will be publicly auditable by every single citizen, them being able to openly keep a copy of it and inspect them for any possible violation of the rules established by the State/Workers.

The "ownership" carries responsibility, and the owner cannot act upon the owned property (or upon the way they distribute its output) without approval of the people. If there's reason to suspect they acted without the interest of the people, the title of ownership will be seized and provided to someone else (and the method could perfectly be electoral votes).

No, I wasn't asking that. And I feel I might have answered why I think that's not a sufficient response to my question in the other comment.

There’s the option of recall elections.

How do you know you need to recall elections if the system is opaque? how do you recall elections if those who even suggest that's needed are silenced via dirty means? How do you ensure alternatives cannot be pushed down by the ruling government? In a system where reputation is placed as the most important thing, how do you ensure that reputation is fair and the ruling party is not manipulating the information in order to mudden the opposition's reputation and strengthen their own?

Don't you think there are rules / safeguards that need to be placed to make sure that can work at all?

Also: do you think any of this (including the election bit) is incompatible with my proposal? why?

Historically, fascists have not been that popular

The objective fact is that they have had enough popularity, multiple times, to actually win elections.

So, again: is popularity PROOF of good will? ... or is it (like you previosly admitted before, despite being defensive about it) only an "indication"?

Because there are all sort of things that it could be an indication of. Not just good will, it could also be an indication that censorship and social pressure of a party of powerful people that don't act in good will does work at keeping up a good reputation for a big enough section of the population.

1. That doesn’t really make much sense to me, it isn’t about banning private property but publicly owning and collectivizing all property

Does that mean that you agree with me that doing it would not fix the problem?

There would be no real mechanisms for aquiring private property or outcompeting the rest of society

I feel you are just playing with words. Would you be banning "the establishment of State-driven mechanisms of acquiring private property"? or would you be actually allowing the State to put rules to allow/enforce those mechanisms?

Do I need to start saying "State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property" instead of "private ownership" from now on to satisfy the way you wanna use the term?

Moreover, it isn’t a utopia, there will be problems and issues that people have to work through.

Yea, that was my point, it's the problems and issues are what needs to be addressed to make it "a utopia".

2. Recall elections.

Ah, so you don't think the separation of power is useful if there already are elections? Because that's what point 2 was... either you are not addressing it, or you legitimately think elections make it so that separation is not useful.

Note that in my ideal state, after a private owner is destituted, I would not see a problem with calling for elections on who should be the next owner. Again, this is not something that is incompatible with "State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property".

The thing is, the question you have been asking over and over is vague. “Fairness” means a million different things, “exploitation” means a million different things. You were never specific until this comment.

Yes, because it's something that touches on morality, it is difficult to determine, just the same as how it's difficult to determine that "good" means.

But you did not put this term into question before. It's the first time you asked, even though you used the term as well. What do you think counts as fairness for you?

Specifically, the kind of "Fairness" you used in this comment, what did you mean there?

"Capitalism is categorized by a Mode of Production where Private Ownership and Markets are primary, Socialism is categorized by Public Ownership and planning being primary, and Communism specifically is a Mode of Production where all property has been collectivized globally, and Class therefore erased, with the State alongside it, leaving a world republic. It isn’t a “one drop” rule or about which is more common, but which is primary. Fairness is indeed not the determining characteristic."

You said here that fairness is not the "determining characteristic" of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. What kind of fairness were you thinking here?

In my case, what I was referring to is following rules that are designed for the benefit of the people.

In retrospect, after seeing what you meant by "primary", I'm really wondering what did you mean, since later you told me that the State not working for the people was, for you, a determining characteristic of Capitalism... so I'm expecting you have a different definition of "fairness", otherwise there would seem there's a contradiction.

Communists speculate on what a future society may look like, but focus on the present systems and present trajectories. [...]

You did not answer the question:

"Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you don’t even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?"

Do focus on the present trajectory, please... you cannot set a proper trajectory if your plan leads to the wrong target.

Again, I'm not asking what form that distribution takes, I'm asking how do you ensure it's fair.

If there's unfair exploitation, I could not care less if it involves Labor Vouchers, cheques, salt or cryptocurrency..

What I'm looking for is methods to detect and punish those who manipulate the system to distribute those goods unfairly. Those who lick the right boots to try and get favors from their distributing friends. I want to see how those countries are placing measures to punish THEIR OWN friends if they are unfair EVEN when it would benefit the one executing punishment to let it slide, I'm asking what method of PROTECTION (not prosecution) those who denounce problems in the system will receive. I'm asking how do you ensure transparency... how can people detect if something might be wrong? and if something is wrong and someone finds Xi Jinping with heir hands in a pot of foul honey, how can they guarantee they'll be able to openly criticize and denounce leading to punishment in the same way my ideal State would punish those who distribute unfairly for their own benefit.

Those are the things that are important. Those are the things that prevent exploitation. I have not yet heard one measure against abuse that could not be applied in a system with private ownership. You could perfectly provide free essentials in a "private ownership" society, in fact many countries considered capitalists already do some level of this (admittedly, not enough, but it's a good direction), my ideal State would have this cranked to 11.

The idea that to call a system “Socialist” or to say that a party in power is genuinely working towards xyz aims means that the system doesn’t have problems it needs to work on is flawed

Like capitalism, the problem is embedded in the way the system works, it is systemic. They definitely need to work on it, it needs more than a wash. even replacing the government would not work. Because the problem has never been who's the one in control, but what safeguards are in place to ensure the control isn't abused, the problem of capitalism isn't the mere existence of private owners, but that there are no forms of control being put in place that prevent abuse.. which is exactly the problem China has. If China finds a solution to solve this, I don't see why it would not be applicable to a private ownership system.

I’d counter that by saying Trump also lost the popular vote twice

He's popular now, though. Historically, most fascists have been overwhelmingly popular when they have won elections too. And they often pushed to keep their popularity through dirty manipulation tactics and unrestrained control over the state that places primary importance on their own reputation..

Like I said, being popular is no proof of being honest / good.

As for your system not existing in reality, I am specifically questioning why you want that.

Ah, you should have asked that then.

There's more than one reason:

1. I want to test whether it's true that your ideal utopic Communism really works BECAUSE of the ban on private ownership, or does it only work (if it does, it has not been proven) regardless of it (or maybe even in spite of it). If it's true that banning primary ownership is a necessary piece to achieve freedom for the Workers, then it should be impossible to postulate a position where a strong government enforces extreme regulation against private owners that forces them to become (in essence) executors of the will of the State, not much different than a well regulated official that is forced to behave.
2. I said it before, I'm a defender of the separation of power. I think it would be much more difficult to ensure people responsible get punished by their bad acts if they are friends of the ones doing the punishing. I'd say that feel that removing the figure of the independent person responsible of distribution (responsible as in, the one who would be scrutinized) to replace it with a person who is no longer independent might actually make it harder to ensure the scrutiny is actually effectively carried out.

there’s a difference between funneling all of profits in an economy with a large private sector towards social safety nets like you seem to be wanting (at which point public ownership entirely is more efficient)

Can you explain how is it more efficient?

I have no genuine idea what you mean by “what rules did they set” to ensure this

I think I can respond that in the other thread, since that's the same question I was asking (over and over, in multiple parts of this thread), I hope this time you can understand what I mean.

What you’re doing is Utopianism, trying to imagine a better society to create outright, rather than analyzing where society is heading and how we can best steer that.

You are doing it backwards if you think you can steer without first having a goal/destination. Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you don't even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?

I meant profit of Use-Value.

I already asked you this question before, but you did not answer it, and I remember you were the one to use the word "profit" (in quotes) when talking about Communism for this same reason (I did notice).

How do you ensure the ones who work the hardest get the most Use-Value of the community "profit"?

Or do we no longer care about unfair redistribution of goods / services / food / water / housing / etc ?

Is it only under "private ownership" where we need to make sure we give more value to the ones who work the hardest? is it not unfair if someone who works the least gets more than someone who works the most? what about someone who happens to be friend with the one distributing housing?

... And with this I go to bed, it's late here... thanks for the discussion!

Yes, but that would be the legislative / planning arm.. there should be, I expect, an executive arm carrying out the redistribution. Essentially, they would act as the owners of the profit generation-distribution of the particular service, in the same way the private owners do.

So my hope is that they are treated with the same level of scrutiny / social pressure. Essentially, there would not be a lot of difference between private ownership and a form of common ownership when both have a good control. Because at the end of the day, the control is what matters, not whether they have a paper that says "owner" or a paper that says "distributor".

No, by "assume responsibility" I mean: be the one who's executed / imprisoned / their head cut off

It's the State who should be enforcing that. I'm not saying private owners magically are responsible people.. what I sad is that they will be the ones found responsible by the State.

I literally mean punishing the one who is the owner, whenever unfairness is found.

Who would be punished in Communism? and how?

But thanks for the attempt at trying to understand me, even if not very successfully :P (also thanks @Edie@lemmy.ml )

Where have you read about China where you get those impressions?

My wife is chinese. My sister in law was working for Huawei (just this year she finally quit and came to the EU). I also had China chinese coworkers that were pretty unhappy about how chinese companies they were working for before treated them (eg. AliExpress).

Part of why Xi Jinping is so popular is because he ran an anti-corruption campaign

Do you actually believe it when you see a politician saying they ran an anti-corruption campaign with the goal of actually benefiting the Workers and not themselves? Again, I repeat the statement: "the CCP is more concerned about their own reputation than anything else".

Do you think being popular is proof of actually being honest / good politician?

Trump won the popular vote.... a politician having a lot of fans that make a lot of noise does not mean anything. Specially when you are openly banning people who are critic of you...

If Xi Jinping is so good, why does he need to use dirty methods to silence criticism? why is he, instead of searching for transparency, pushing to hide feedback from the Workers?

Transparency is THE ONE THING that can effectively fight corruption. Taking out leaders of big corpos is just a way to wash your hands so that you can then continue playing with the mud under your opaque curtain, protected by "yes men".

I don’t see what you mean by a “private sector, worker state” as an ideal. That doesn’t really exist anywhere, the closest would be the NEP or the PRC’s economy

I did not say that it exists. Communist states don't exist either, you already said that.

its purpose was to develop the Productive Forces to the point where they could be collectivized

So it did not set rules to make sure the workers are not being treated unfairly? Then I would not consider that any closer than any normal social democracy to what I was proposing. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Social Democracies were closer to it.

Having the purpose of collectivizing does not tell me anything about what rules are being set to ensure we “pay more for more skilled jobs” or “pay the same for fewer hours for dangerous jobs”. It looks like an "in-between" experiment towards something else entirely rather than actually trying to attack the root of the problem.

I think you need to do more studying on why AES states function the way they do, rather than try to theorycraft an ideal society.

Why can't you explain it? (this makes me feel a bit like this comment wasn't that far off)

Is theorycrafting only fun when it's about exploring solutions that reject private ownership?

Sorry, but I disagree China "has a State designed to serve the Workers" (my requirement). I'd say they are in an "in-between" state towards my ideal "private sector, workers state" society, but not really there...

For example, an important tool (probably necessary requirement) to ensure the Workers are being prioritized is transparency. At the moment, I think the CCP is more concerned about their own reputation than anything else. They are perfectly happy with letting big corpo expoit when it benefits the CCP... to the point that they would sooner acquire the company and become themselves the ones doing the explotaition than actually fixing the issues via policy.

The have a wimpy soft globe when it comes to defending the workers but a long tongue when it comes to licking boots of the powerful. They are definitely NOT what I was talking about.

I haven't cecked on Laos and Vietnam, but if you are mentioning China among them (and considering they are pretty close and likely friends of the CCP) I don't have high expectations.

About NEP.. I'm searching but I'm finding it hard to find any measures that were taken to control private owners and force them to redistribute profits. I also see that the Workers were unhappy and called it "New Exploitation of the Proletariat".. so again, it looks like an attempt at addressing the wrong problems. It still does not meet my requirement.

I see.. well, that seems like a pretty nice idea to me, if it's the way I'm envisioning it.

Also, as a defender of the idea of division of powers, I honestly prefer when executive powers at all levels are distinct from planning/legislative. So if it does really "necessarily trend towards Communism" I'd hope whatever replaces the private owners does the same job of assuming responsibility if/when unfairness happens as it did before the fall. I'd hate if the same level of scrutiny and legal/social pressure wasn't placed against the ones replacing them.

What do you mean by “main” form of ownership? The primary? Or the one most common?

I meant the most common. What do you call it?

Also, note that I did not ask you if it exists or not, Communism does not exist either but that does not invalidate the idea, right?

I am not sure how you expect your form of society to come into existence except as a transitional society, like the NEP in the USSR.

I agree. A transitional "in-between" solution. That's exactly what I meant, a system that still has not fully transitioned and still depends on some core elements from capitalist systems.

I see. Sorry I missed that.

But then I think that interpretation implies, in its very definition, oligarchy.

What do you call a society where private ownership is the main form of ownership and yet has a State designed to serve the Workers?

Socialism isn’t an “in-between solution,” towards Communism. It’s the process of building Communism.

And to build communism you don't need an in-between solution?

Is it really only "a process"? or is it also a socioeconomic system?

Humanity has never seen Communism, so I am not sure why you are trying to discuss it. What are you trying to talk about, the hypothetical future society of Communism?

Yes. Humanity has never seen a fair society, period. Neither one with private ownership, nor one with common ownership. The aliens were not talking about Socialism, they were talking about a hypothetical future society where ownership wasn't a thing at all (not even collective ownership in the socialist sense), nor contracts.

And I dared to try to talk as well about a hypothetical future society of (what I initially considered to be, under my previous definition) Capitalism too.

Private Ownership itself is not Capitalism. Capitalism and Socialism are labels for economies, not individual aspects of an economy

This is what I asked you before. What is capitalism? you agreed with the definition I gave. If you are gonna change the term then we are no longer talking about the same thing.

Like I said, I don't want to talk about socialism because I feel it's an in-between solution that would just make the topic more complex than it already is. Socialism is not Communism either, so please do not use Socialist examples.

Social Democracies like the Nordic Countries are not Socialist.

I know, that's why the full term I used was "social democratic capitalistic countries", I consider them capitalist States.

Most companies pay taxes, yes. The purpose of ownership is the profit

Ok, so if it's only a purpose and not part of the definition, then it is possible to have ownership without profit.

I'd argue, the only reason why the purpose of ownership is profit is because it is profitable to have ownership, but having ownership does not necessarily imply you get all the profit.

From this it follows that if having ownership were to be no longer profitable (or say.. still profitable but less than being a worker), then it would be possible to have private ownership (capitalism) where profit is not the purpose of having ownership.

Socialism isn’t about equal pay, nor is Communism. As for guaranteeing, that’s not really important. You can pay more for more skilled jobs, or pay the same for fewer hours for dangerous jobs. Look at how Socialist societies exist currently.

But who guarantees that you "pay more for more skilled jobs" or "pay the same for fewer hours for dangerous jobs"? And specifically, in communism, not in socialism. Let's not argue on whether socialist societies running in social democratic capitalistic countries can be considered to be from one side or the other. "Common ownership" is not the same as "collective ownership", and it can come with its very own set of unfair practices.

Also, my question was specifically about the redistribution of the profit. How do you guarantee that the profit goes to the one who works the hardest and not to the one who happens to be in a circumstance that places them in a position where they can reap the most rewards?

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

If it’s privately owned, the profits go to the owner, if it’s publicly owned then the “profits” go to the whole of society, in the form of safety nets, industrialization, etc.

Is this really what "ownership" means? is it impossible to own something but not get all the profits from it? Even if a law enforces the redistribution of profits?

Also, is it possible that even when they are publicly owned, the "profits" benefit more a particular part of the society than other? how do you guarantee that the one who works the most gets the most? or do you simply don't mind about that anymore?

It’s more accurate to say that the systemic issues of Capitalism sharpen as it centralizes

That's essentially what I was saying. In general, centralizing power will always sharpen any unfairness within that power.. that's why the issue is not in the centralization, but in the unfairness. Focusing in the centralization does not address the point.

I feel the issues with capitalism don't necessarily arise from the centralization per se (if that were the case, then centralizing the power in the State would be bad too), but from the consequences of that centralization when the decisions of that private entity are entirely "free". That's why freedom ends where someone else's begins.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong (and I say this with complete honesty), but my interpretation is that communism is whenever there's common (public/communal) ownership of the means of production, while capitalism is whenever there's private ownership of the means of production.

Under this interpretation (which could be wrong, again, correct me), ALL forms of common ownership are forms of communism (regardless of how fair/unfair are their laws), and ALL forms of private ownership are forms of capitalism (regardless of how fair/unfair are their laws).

I believe that there's a point where the factories could be so heavily regulated by laws and rules set up by the State that whether they are privately owned or not would be little more than a piece of paper that is used to determine who's the one who will be executed/imprisoned if the resources are found to not have been distributed fairly.

Of course, no state in the world has reached that point of utopic social democratic capitalistic harmony.. but also no state in the world has reached the utopic communist ideal either, right?

I have astigmatism too and for me it looks just as bad when inverted, a blurry mess of black on white.

To me, what makes one a better choice vs the other has more to do with my environmental lighting.

• If I'm on a place with a lot of light, the screen being black makes it have reflections so I prefer black on white in those cases.
• If I'm in a dark place, the bright screen makes the screen itself the primary source of light which is not good for my eyesight, it can make my eyes feel like burning/tired after a while.

You don't need about:config for this.

This is the same setting you can configure in the preferences under "Website appearance".. if you change that you'll see the about:config setting changes too.