If u looked at my username u would see a little Australian flag. I wonder if that perhaps would indicate that I am not indeed American? If you are such an expert perhaps u can elaborate on how you would define it and how that is contradictory to my usage of it?
I think for this conversation to happen it would be good if you could define what for you is “extreme socialism”, and quickly explain how the argument you are making actually connects to the point OP made about the difference of private and personal property and how people misunderstand the difference.
I asked for a definition and how that was contradictory to my claim as starting with someone else’s definition and proving that said definition is either absurd, wrong, or proves my claim is a far easyer task.
Socialism is by definition the collective ownership of the means of production. Which gives u 2 major problems.
What does collective ownership mean?
What counts as means of production?
According to Marx the means of production is resources, tools, and infrastructure. This includes tangible assets like factories, machinery, land, raw materials, and technology, as well as intangible elements such as intellectual property. Essentially anything that isn’t human effort. This is a very vague and potentially broad definition and can be used to justify u not owning anything. A car is infrastructure for transport u can’t privately own it. A house is land and means for production u can’t privately own it. Ur phone is a tool you can’t privately own it. Your next meal is infrastructure for the continuation of society u can’t privately own it. An idea is intellectual property u can’t privately own it. So anything that can be used to generate economic power u don’t own. Literally everything u own can generate economic power and is thus part of the means of production.
Now what does collective ownership mean? Most would say it means that the means of production are owned and managed by the community, society, or a representative public body. So it sounds great in theory that everyone owns everything but that doesn’t really help the fact that someone needs to manage everything at every level. U must select a leader to make decision regarding the means of production. What u have thus essentially done is handed all means of production to 1 single person or group. This is an obscene amount of concentration of power in a very small group of people or a single person.
Say u elect a power hungry leader they control everything. Ur house, ur communication, ur transport, ur food, ur education, ur children education. A power Hungary leader would immediately start making the lives of those loyal to them better and the lives of those unloyal worse. Imagine that trump gets elected as the leader of a socialist state then he decides to do the following in blue states: limit power production
Slow factories outputs
Reduce transportation
Reduce doctors in hospitals
Reallocate police to different areas
Take all the water out of the river upstream in a loyal state
Turn off the cell towers to silence any complaints
Pull the firebrigate out and send in a patsy to start wildfires
Reallocate fertiliser to other states
Reallocate food to other states
U might be able to implement checks and balances to prevent some of these but their are an infinite amount of evil things that could be done.
In a capitalist society u can’t just stop people shipping food to a state u have to make every single private entity stop individually, doable but much harder. And no u can’t just have many smaller socialist communities to decentralise power cos all u’ve done now is reinvent the concept of the private company.
That’s before we get the point of “what’s the point of putting in any effort in a socialist society”. Why would I work harder, work longer, invent new things if doing so does not increase the quality of my life? I’m studying to get a good degree to make lots of money to get a good life where I can do the things I want with all the stuff I accumulate. Under socialism why would I do this? Why wouldn’t I do the bare minimum and go to the pub every day? Why try when my life is no better off for doing so?
So we have a country of lazy bums who own nothing and a ruling class that own everything and can force u to do anything they want lest ur means of survival get revoked.
So what about absolute capitalism? No collective ownership everything is private. Well the first guy to pay for the first private military gets to use that private military to go kill anyone they disagree with and own literally everything. They can then rent everything to you so u can create value for them. Working harder doesn’t improve my life cos I own nothing and will never own anything cos I’m a slave to whoever owns everything.
So we have a country of lazy bums who own nothing and a ruling class that own everything and can force u to do anything they want lest ur means of survival get revoked.
Wait a minute that’s the exact situation absolute socialism got us into.
So some people would thus say we will allow some private ownership but everything else will be collectively owned. And depending how far along that spectrum u are defines pretty much every single society that currently exists. Less collective and more private u have the US more collective and less private u have the Chinese.
So we have ended up exactly at the only logical place to be. A healthy mix of both. I can come up with an idea to solve real world problems I can build a private company around that idea and charge people for me solving that problem for them. I can then go home and not worry about getting stabbed or my house burning down cos I pay a percentage of that money I made (tax) to the central ownership committee (the government) who pay for the collective ownership of the means of production to ensure I don’t get stabbed (the police) and my house doesn’t burn down (the fire brigade).
I’m a utilitarian (society should do the most good for the greatest number of people). As a result of that we need some socialist policy like police, and a fire service, and healthcare, and roads, and education. We also some need capitalist policy to align the incentives for people to put in effort to make peoples lives better. For instance u get rewarded with profit when u solve someone’s problems, u can own property so u can improve that property or use it to generate value for society, if u are better than other people u deserve to have a better life because u earned that by benefiting other people. If you are not adding to society you do not deserve anything. The only rule that has ever and will ever matter in this universe is Darwinian selection. Capitalism is Darwinian selection of goods, services, and ideas. Capitalism strives to promote greatness and that which doesn’t meet this bar ceases to exist. Socialism strives for the lowest possible in every regard. Nobody expects the government to make the world best roads we expect them to make roads good enough to get us and our goods from point A to point B without catastrophic failure.
We need socialism to create a fair playing field and we need capitalism to provide incentives to people to build a society on top of that.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
If u looked at my username u would see a little Australian flag. I wonder if that perhaps would indicate that I am not indeed American? If you are such an expert perhaps u can elaborate on how you would define it and how that is contradictory to my usage of it?
hoppolito@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Hmm nah.
the username of muntedcrocodile without a little Australian flag
But, to engage without as much snark:
I think for this conversation to happen it would be good if you could define what for you is “extreme socialism”, and quickly explain how the argument you are making actually connects to the point OP made about the difference of private and personal property and how people misunderstand the difference.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
Hmm seems ur client doesn’t do display names.
I asked for a definition and how that was contradictory to my claim as starting with someone else’s definition and proving that said definition is either absurd, wrong, or proves my claim is a far easyer task.
Socialism is by definition the collective ownership of the means of production. Which gives u 2 major problems.
According to Marx the means of production is resources, tools, and infrastructure. This includes tangible assets like factories, machinery, land, raw materials, and technology, as well as intangible elements such as intellectual property. Essentially anything that isn’t human effort. This is a very vague and potentially broad definition and can be used to justify u not owning anything. A car is infrastructure for transport u can’t privately own it. A house is land and means for production u can’t privately own it. Ur phone is a tool you can’t privately own it. Your next meal is infrastructure for the continuation of society u can’t privately own it. An idea is intellectual property u can’t privately own it. So anything that can be used to generate economic power u don’t own. Literally everything u own can generate economic power and is thus part of the means of production.
Now what does collective ownership mean? Most would say it means that the means of production are owned and managed by the community, society, or a representative public body. So it sounds great in theory that everyone owns everything but that doesn’t really help the fact that someone needs to manage everything at every level. U must select a leader to make decision regarding the means of production. What u have thus essentially done is handed all means of production to 1 single person or group. This is an obscene amount of concentration of power in a very small group of people or a single person.
Say u elect a power hungry leader they control everything. Ur house, ur communication, ur transport, ur food, ur education, ur children education. A power Hungary leader would immediately start making the lives of those loyal to them better and the lives of those unloyal worse. Imagine that trump gets elected as the leader of a socialist state then he decides to do the following in blue states: limit power production Slow factories outputs Reduce transportation Reduce doctors in hospitals Reallocate police to different areas Take all the water out of the river upstream in a loyal state Turn off the cell towers to silence any complaints Pull the firebrigate out and send in a patsy to start wildfires Reallocate fertiliser to other states Reallocate food to other states U might be able to implement checks and balances to prevent some of these but their are an infinite amount of evil things that could be done.
In a capitalist society u can’t just stop people shipping food to a state u have to make every single private entity stop individually, doable but much harder. And no u can’t just have many smaller socialist communities to decentralise power cos all u’ve done now is reinvent the concept of the private company.
That’s before we get the point of “what’s the point of putting in any effort in a socialist society”. Why would I work harder, work longer, invent new things if doing so does not increase the quality of my life? I’m studying to get a good degree to make lots of money to get a good life where I can do the things I want with all the stuff I accumulate. Under socialism why would I do this? Why wouldn’t I do the bare minimum and go to the pub every day? Why try when my life is no better off for doing so?
So we have a country of lazy bums who own nothing and a ruling class that own everything and can force u to do anything they want lest ur means of survival get revoked.
So what about absolute capitalism? No collective ownership everything is private. Well the first guy to pay for the first private military gets to use that private military to go kill anyone they disagree with and own literally everything. They can then rent everything to you so u can create value for them. Working harder doesn’t improve my life cos I own nothing and will never own anything cos I’m a slave to whoever owns everything.
So we have a country of lazy bums who own nothing and a ruling class that own everything and can force u to do anything they want lest ur means of survival get revoked.
Wait a minute that’s the exact situation absolute socialism got us into.
So some people would thus say we will allow some private ownership but everything else will be collectively owned. And depending how far along that spectrum u are defines pretty much every single society that currently exists. Less collective and more private u have the US more collective and less private u have the Chinese.
So we have ended up exactly at the only logical place to be. A healthy mix of both. I can come up with an idea to solve real world problems I can build a private company around that idea and charge people for me solving that problem for them. I can then go home and not worry about getting stabbed or my house burning down cos I pay a percentage of that money I made (tax) to the central ownership committee (the government) who pay for the collective ownership of the means of production to ensure I don’t get stabbed (the police) and my house doesn’t burn down (the fire brigade).
I’m a utilitarian (society should do the most good for the greatest number of people). As a result of that we need some socialist policy like police, and a fire service, and healthcare, and roads, and education. We also some need capitalist policy to align the incentives for people to put in effort to make peoples lives better. For instance u get rewarded with profit when u solve someone’s problems, u can own property so u can improve that property or use it to generate value for society, if u are better than other people u deserve to have a better life because u earned that by benefiting other people. If you are not adding to society you do not deserve anything. The only rule that has ever and will ever matter in this universe is Darwinian selection. Capitalism is Darwinian selection of goods, services, and ideas. Capitalism strives to promote greatness and that which doesn’t meet this bar ceases to exist. Socialism strives for the lowest possible in every regard. Nobody expects the government to make the world best roads we expect them to make roads good enough to get us and our goods from point A to point B without catastrophic failure.
We need socialism to create a fair playing field and we need capitalism to provide incentives to people to build a society on top of that.