That can be done without coercion. If the reason to do a form of socialism is to take care of the poor, I think we can do that without the caustic government and capitalism-nerfing economic controls.
Let’s just take care of each other. If your close friends or family don’t do that, they aren’t respected. If the leaders of the companies you like don’t do that, you switch loyalty. Sounds like the best of both worlds, no?
But capitalism IS coercive. The police and other agencies are needed to protect the capitalist class and preserve this form of economic governance! Capitalism is by its very nature coercive, but in a way more subtle than what came before it. As a matter of fact, any state-based ideology is coercive to some degree, regardless of if it is a democracy or a dictatorship, or if it is socialist or capitalist. The idea should be, who is coercing who? The capitalists coercing workers, or the people deciding the laws that all coerce them equally?
I’m loving this conversation
I agree that state-based systems are coercive, that’s not what i’m suggesting though. I just mean people freely interacting or not. Selling and buying or not, all completely freely. Does that clarify that there wouldn’t be coercion?
(And giving)
The market itself exerts a peculiar tyranny, as you are dooming people's futures to be determined by a chaotic, nonlinear system. I would vastly prefer a form of democratic planning that utilizes technology to aid decision making. In a socialist system, the individual would have an obligation not to their boss or employer like in capitalism, but an obligation to their community and their fellow human beings. A capitalist society is not free. No political or economic system is completely free. You will always be beholden to someone.
Huh. I’ve never thought about the whims of the market as being tyranny. Let’s break that down. The whims of the market are just the sum total of the whims of each person. It’s not tyrannical for someone to say “I no longer want to use my time to acquire the widget you make”. That’s just them deciding to live their life differently. Would you agree with that?
In the society I’m thinking of, people still have a social duty to their community. That obligation just doesn’t have a gun on the other side.
Someday maybe AI will plan everything for us. It’ll probably be doing everything cognitive good. And like we’ve talked, eventually manual.
I hope there can be a way for people who agree with you to test your ideas out! If I get what I hope for, there will be. I’m hope you’d agree that forcing them on unwilling people is unseemly.
It is tyrannical when the selfish behavior of a few powerful actors ends up punishing those that behave in a good manner.
Help me out with an example, what are you thinking about here?
2008
Greedflation
The great depression
The entire US healthcare system
Mass incarceration
Forever wars
Union busting throughout history
Savings and loan crisis
Theranos
Climate change
Planned obsolescence
COVID 19 vaccine price gouging from Moderna
Homelessness problem
And this is all stuff off of the top of my head. The iceberg is deep.
Haha, that’s a lot of examples. Maybe I can choose one?
Planned obsolescence - assuming that’s where the device is made to break after x time - doesn’t punish anyone. You’re just buying a time bomb. If they don’t tell you about it (as has been the case recently), that’s antisocial behavior, and capitalist systems correct that naturally with no added structures as consumers get angry and choose alternatives.
You are assuming healthy competition.
True, which I think is a safe assumption on a long enough timescale where people are free. No?
Unregulated Capitalism inevitably leads to a situation where a couple of bad apples corrupt the entire system. Point me to proof disproving my assumption here.
Haha I’m game to try. What’s our definition of “corrupt the entire system” and what time horizon should we be thinking on?
Twitter: look at is right. We are the Twitter now
Typos lol
“Look at us. We are the Twitter now”
Mass incarceration: this is a democracy problem not a capitalism problem imo
Get the profits out of the prison system, so the prison industry cannot pay off politicians.
Hey I fully agree - that is one way.
Freedom works too, but both can work for this.
The freedom route would be recognizing that it’s not cool to give people power to arm and send bands of armed dudes to incarcerate people for peacefully smoking or selling some weed.
The freedom route I think in this case might be resistant to more forms of influence than just the private prison money.
I also think that we should expand the social safety net to reduce addiction and help the poor and marginalized.
đź’Ż
Course I want to do it freely rather than coercively
But that’s so minor a point that I almost crossed it out. I so totally agree with this point. We could help so much more if we didn’t have such a ME culture.
Feel free to ping any that I didn’t chose btw
I do agree that forcing an unpopular idea is contrary to democratic principles, which I support.
Democratic principles = forcing the minority to do what the majority thinks
