Capitalism: the cause of and solution to all life's problems

[Travis B.]

Oh, I wasn't actually aware of council communism, or the term being actually used by anybody. Good to know. Thanks.

Now that I look into them, however, that isn't quite what I had in mind. I find too much revolutionary fervour leaves not enough room for critical thought, and I'm not at all keen on the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It should be noted that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as libertarian Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg saw it is seen as the direct rule of the entire proletariat, i.e. of the many, typically through workers' councils, in contrast to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, i.e. of the few, and that this usage of "dictatorship" has little to do with the usual concept of dictatorship nor with the Marxist-Leninists' conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat as being that of a single-party socialist state led by a "vanguard party" rather than the actual direct rule of the proletariat as a whole.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I see I have still much to learn on these points, ehehehehehehehe.

[rotting bones]

I did it! Maybe not very well, but I answered every question!

4. No one really explains how central state planning would work with a democratic system.

I don't think centralized and decentralized are fundamental categories anymore.

My proposal advocates a decentralized planned production and distribution system similar to the market employed by today's capitalism, except for the following: Instead of money, we use votes to measure demand. Every citizen will get an equal number of votes. No one can vote for their own products. Votes determine which goods get produced. These goods can be claimed in exchange for average man hours worked to produce goods in demand under this system. We'll need to hire experts and courts to authenticate quality. Unclaimed goods go to charity.

People are free to ignore this planning system and work in the private sector, but it should exist. That way, firing an employee, eg, will lose its sting. I have said this before, but let me repeat it as clearly as I know how: Markets are free to stick around. The purpose of the democratic socialist apparatus to make sure the market is not allowed to undermine essential industries and let people starve. I only support non-state capitalism under a democratic socialist regime.

This requires a method to count votes that works on a decentralized planned system like the market. Fortunately, there are already systems to transfer and store money digitally. The problem is that even more people will probably try to build alliances and subvert the system than they do today. The field of research for designing algorithms that are robust to manipulation by strategic agents is called algorithmic mechanism design, the most ubiquitous of its results being the blockchain. A centralized ledger with distributed storage would be one method to count the votes. We'd also need courts to settle disputes in distribution.

I realize that the only way to make this happen is to institute an inquisitorial regime from now until doomsday. I am willing to pay that price, just as I'm willing to let the police hunt down murderers till kingdom come despite all the abuses of power entailed by that regime.

1. Every single attempt at centralized socialism ended up as despotic. Stalin is not the only example. It's on the centralized-planning socialists to explain how a never-before-seen utopia will happen next time.

They all followed party supremacist models.

2. Socialists don't seem to have any interest in understanding why those nations were despotic. Gosh something went wrong who knows what, but for sure it won't happen like it did the last dozen times!

I have made a good-faith attempt to diagnose and fix the problem in this thread.

3. When an authoritarian socialist does pop up somewhere, democratic socialists support them without questions.

I'm against the invasion of foreign countries if that's what you're referring to, even places like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Now, I don't think socialism has to be authoritarian-- but I believe in local control, not state planning. One DSA guy I know used to say "the anarchists keep us honest", and he had a point. I'd like to see Wilde's version of socialism, not Marshal Tito's.

Given the context, are you suggesting that if the coops don't hire us, we should steal their stuff? The democratic socialism I endorse is an ideology for the timid majority who don't trust themselves enough to break the law on personal whims.

Decentralized production is expensive, especially for essential goods. There is also no method to enforce justice without some measure of centralization. That is why Nazis love decentralization so much these days. However, there is a debate to be had about how much and what kinds of centralization are appropriate.

* Does the central planner overrule workshops, co-ops, regions, or any other form of local control?

There would be both centralized and decentralized power. Their relative strengths would be open to negotiation just like today.

* Is being overruled by the "democratic" central planner somehow nicer than having a boss?

... yes? Could you explain how following the laws in a democratic country is not better than living under an authoritarian dictatorship? When you are following democratic laws, you are not obeying a private individual. You are living by the rules the people voted for.

* Are the voters allowed to vote for non-socialists? What are the political parties in your utopia?

...

* Do voters just elect leaders/representatives, or are they consulted somehow about production?

Like I explained, it would be a direct democracy in which production would be allocated by vote.

* If they're consulted directly... since when do voters know how to run an economy? Can they vote for gas-guzzling cars and beef feedlots, because like most people they like cars and beef?

Demand is not a form of expertise. All they need to say is what they want more of.

* What did you do with all the reactionaries, centrists, liberals, social democrats, anarchists, and insufficiently centralist socialists? (Hint: this problem has a lot to do with why the Soviet system went despotic. Once everyone of the wrong beliefs is declared an enemy, they get treated as such.)

There are no enemies. I am a great believer in the rights of individuals. Anarchists are free to disrupt society. But if they break the law and get caught, they will pay for it. Nazis will be free to disseminate Nazi propaganda no matter who they offend. If they hurt anyone, they will be punished accordingly. Citizens will also have the right to defend themselves.

I don't believe in Five Year Plans. The planning system will be part of the constitution. Amending the constitution will require a supermajority in a referendum.

* The voters, or the central planner, want nothing but beef. Is everyone forced to be a dairy farmer? Is it "socialism" to be forced into a "useful" profession rather than anything you'd like to do?

The votes create jobs. You still have to join the profession voluntarily. Markets will still exist in case you'd rather be an entrepreneur, but the opportunities will probably be less flashy than they are today.

If everyone wants beef and nothing but beef, then the people who are forced to work as dairy farmers themselves just want beef and nothing but beef. I would implore the people to handle climate change in a responsible manner. But if they keep listening to far right wackos, that is ultimately their choice. In that scenario, the human race is already extinct. It just doesn't know it yet. (Because they won't vote to prevent climate change under capitalism either.)

At present, I feel like the people are forced to behave irresponsibly because they are always short of cash and degrading the environment is a cheap way to get more. People cannot vote to save the environment when existing businesses will take a great monetary loss as a result of that vote. Also, I bet more people would be on board with environmentalism if environmentalists stopped professing to love the environment.

I find the whole comparison to Stalin-esque systems to be a fallacy of association. Having said that, it may very well be that there are kinks in my proposal that I haven't thought of. I would only support democratic socialism if it can be implemented.

[rotting bones]

Let's say I'd rather work in linguistics for a living. The market being what it is, I picked my second choice and started working in IT.
And under socialism? Well, under socialism we'll need just about the same number of linguists and the same number of programmers. My situation would be unchanged.

Market efficiency keeps fewer workers and makes them work harder, doing away with both employment and leisure time in one stroke. It also creates artificial scarcity that it calls "efficiency" as I have argued in the past:



The judgment call you have to make is whether rich people pledge more to linguistics than the number of people who are into linguistics but are too poor or overworked to make a significant contribution. Add to that the fact that general employment would be higher, and I feel like I have raw quantity on my side.

Now, getting back to my craftsman widgetmaker scenario: under a capitalist system, I can pick up widget making at any time and see if it works. It's entirely my business and my customers'.

With idea of production by work vote, this adds a third party: the voters.

That third party is already present. It produces the goods, but is ripped off in terms of pay. Economists claim that workers agree to their pay. In reality, if workers don't take whatever job is available they will starve. Employers are not faced with a similar situation.

Or more likely, their representatives. (You can't hold a referendum over every career choice.) Who may or not know about widget making, and may feel that yes, it's very good, but the kholkhoze needs a lot more COBOL programming than widget amateurs needs widgets.

No, I'm imagining something like Patreon, except the contributions will be in votes that everyone gets an equal number of.

(How does that get solved under capitalism: easy, the price of widgets and the salary of COBOL programmers adjust until COBOL programmers get paid more than widget-makers. Than it's up to me, personally, to pick up what to do.)

Look, for you to be successful in your independent business, someone has to buy your products, right? Now, instead of courting rich patrons, why not court interested fans? Under capitalism, these fans exist, but they are often too poor or overworked to make a significant contribution to interesting projects.

Yep: everybody understood the point of a microprocessor. Nobody saw the personal computer coming -- except the hobbyist. Of course people would have voted down that one.

How is that possible? I would have voted for computers myself.

We routinely get told that the market is more efficient than a planned economy, but nobody really bothers to explain why.
I hope the two examples above help a bit. It's all really about information: between them, seller and buyer have all the necessary information to decide what is produced and sold, and in exchange for what. A planned economy adds a third party, with inevitable information loss, who can only make sub-optimal decisions.

But demand is inherently irrational. What does it even mean to demand the wrong things? Like I said previously, we are already asking voters to fix the "irrational" excesses of capitalism in the sense of being accountable only to the biggest spenders. The most profitable distribution of labor is not the same as the most socially desirable distribution of labor. I'd argue that if people were guaranteed subsistence, they would be more willing to invest in linguistics. Linguistics has many fans, but they are not all able to contribute as much as they'd like because they are poor and/or overworked. I do not believe this is a rational allocation of resources.

Also see my response to zompist.

The market isn't, unlike what conservatives and/or libertarian think, the solution to all and every problem of course. It's just a problem-solving tool that gives very good results under specific conditions. (For instance, we all know - except for the Republicans - that it can't handle health insurance at all.)
Why get rid of an efficient tool and replace it with a less efficient one?

Because capitalist "efficiency" maximizes total social wealth. Most of the time, that wealth just sits there and does nothing for the workers.

I'm not really opposed to socialism, or to capitalism for that matter. My own view is that there's no silver bullet. I suspect an ideal society would have capitalist features (such as a free market) as well as socialist ones.

I'm not against all capitalism either. I bear no ill will towards whatever markets survive the democratization of the economy, though having them be associated with the state sounds like a bad idea to me.

In the short term, some measures would help immensely: discouraging capital accumulation through taxes, encouraging unions (they're a pain in the ass, but like they, you can't live with them, you can't live without them), granting them a seat on the administration council (at least for large companies), and how about universal basic income?

The problem is that people cannot vote for socialism under capitalism. If business becomes less profitable, capital will fly abroad, leaving people with fewer jobs at home.

(Oh, on the robots replacing us: the current 'AI revolution' is impressive but nowhere near being able to replace us. Also, don't buy all the marketing bullshit. A surprising number of 'AI' projects turn out to use good old-fashioned linear regression...)

Robots don't need innovative thoughts. They just need to keep a few people alive. I'm thinking a couple of biospheres equipped with automated tractors and threshers ought to do the trick for a small community in the event of an environmental catastrophe. In general, robots are not AI. Robots that replace industrial workers can already be implemented. In a hundred years, they could easily be building their own replacements from raw materials.

We can even do away with programmers using a standard library of programs stored in ROMs if anything additional is considered a luxury.

But let's say, miraculously, technology that works today stops working tomorrow. Without a global authority to tax capital, there would be no way to check the free fall in workers' wages in proportion to revenue.

With equal distribution, none of this presents a threat. Robots can do the work, and the proceeds can still be distributed equally. Even if the economy tanks as a result of irresponsible decisions, the products of labor will still be distributed in proportion to average man hours worked down to the bitter end.

[rotting bones]

(Another question: how do you get a planned system running in the first place without it being undermined, from the start, by informal market traders selling the People's Glorious Manufacturing Plant's widgets from the backs of their trucks and cooking the books to avoid getting caught? Wait, that gave me an idea: A sci-fi reboot of Only Fools and Horses set in a futuristic socialist utopia...)

They are free to try. If caught, they will be fined an amount that will make this business unprofitable on average. This society is no utopia. It only makes an attempt to not be a dystopia, which is more than I can say for our society.

[zompist]

My proposal advocates a decentralized planned production and distribution system similar to the market employed by today's capitalism, except for the following: Instead of money, we use votes to measure demand. Every citizen will get an equal number of votes. No one can vote for their own products. Votes determine which goods get produced. These goods can be claimed in exchange for average man hours worked to produce goods in demand under this system. We'll need to hire experts and courts to authenticate quality. Unclaimed goods go to charity.

People are free to ignore this planning system and work in the private sector, but it should exist. That way, firing an employee, eg, will lose its sting. I have said this before, but let me repeat it as clearly as I know how: Markets are free to stick around. The purpose of the democratic socialist apparatus to make sure the market is not allowed to undermine essential industries and let people starve. I only support non-state capitalism under a democratic socialist regime.

This requires a method to count votes that works on a decentralized planned system like the market. Fortunately, there are already systems to transfer and store money digitally. The problem is that even more people will probably try to build alliances and subvert the system than they do today. The field of research for designing algorithms that are robust to manipulation by strategic agents is called algorithmic mechanism design, the most ubiquitous of its results being the blockchain. A centralized ledger with distributed storage would be one method to count the votes. We'd also need courts to settle disputes in distribution.

Thanks for the explanation. I think we're basically conworlding here, and that's fine, and we can't expect to create a perfect system. Just trying to work out something is a good exercise.

I'm going to assume, since your analogy is the market, that "votes" can be split between goods. It would be kind of absurd if a voter can only specify one good. So I take it the voter creates a sort of shopping list. For simplicity, everyone gets 1000 votes and splits them up on stuff. This is then used as a guide for production.

The first problem is that people would game the system-- or on a deeper level, it's not clear how a voter should try to game the system. Suppose I really really want the economy to produce video games. Then I should allocate all my votes to video games, assuming that other people will provide votes for food, shelter, medicine, etc. Now, maybe that's a good way for nerds or minorities to make sure they get what they want. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the total results will be balanced or even coherent. Maybe everyone wants video games. Oops, we forgot to produce any food.

Compare the money economy, which is like a vote with votes that matter personally. If you don't vote for food-- i.e. you buy no food-- then you get no food.

But suppose we convince everyone somehow to vote for the things they need. What prevents the opposite problem? Everyone thinks "I better makes sure to vote for food, shelter, and medicine, so everyone gets some." Then we overproduce those things, and never produce books, cars, toys, conlangs, or a million other things. You're asking everyone to know what the optimal level of production is, and no one really knows that.

The next problem is that, unlike the money market, there is no mechanism for actually producing what people want. If people all put down 500 votes for food, then the economy should spend 50% of its effort on food. And what makes it do that? Are 50% of the people now forced to become farmers? That's a recipe for disaster. (Remember Mao's order for the peasants to create iron in their backyards? He had a system which could force people to obey stupid orders. And its was a stupid order; the peasants knew nothing about iron-making. They made crappy iron.)

Next, there's nothing to make voters take ecology into account. I asked about beef because we now way over-produce beef, devoting a huge proportion of farmland simply to feeding cattle, and creating a major problem with methane, which helps cause climate change, as well as toxic amounts of manure and chemicals. Do you let the people vote for things that will destroy the ecosphere? Or each other, for that matter?

What if it reasonably costs 15% of the economy to provide health care, but people only vote for 5%? And the next year, because health care is so crappy, they decide to punish that sector by voting for even less of it.

Your system is like an eternal set of plebiscites, and that's one of the worst forms of democracy. People are not very good at thinking through complex issues, taking externalities into account, thinking of the whole of society rather than themselves, thinking five years ahead, etc. Admittedly, experts can be terrible too! All the more reason to be very careful about what we leave to voters and what we leave to experts.

What I think we can agree on is that it would be ideal for the people to be consulted in more detail. The weakest form of democracy, though it's better than nothing, is simply choosing one set of rulers. But it's not exactly fine-grained, and doesn't allow any nuances. It would be better if we could express a preference on a wide range of policy choices.

[rotting bones]

Thanks for the explanation. I think we're basically conworlding here, and that's fine, and we can't expect to create a perfect system. Just trying to work out something is a good exercise.

If we waited for every problem to be thought of before proposing new ideas, the world of ideas would enter a stasis.

The first problem is that people would game the system-- or on a deeper level, it's not clear how a voter should try to game the system. Suppose I really really want the economy to produce video games. Then I should allocate all my votes to video games, assuming that other people will provide votes for food, shelter, medicine, etc. Now, maybe that's a good way for nerds or minorities to make sure they get what they want. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the total results will be balanced or even coherent. Maybe everyone wants video games. Oops, we forgot to produce any food.

First beef and now video games? Okay, can you seriously name one article that would tank the economy like this? (Edit: This consideration applies even more to the market, where there is a profit motive, than it does to my system.)

Compare the money economy, which is like a vote with votes that matter personally. If you don't vote for food-- i.e. you buy no food-- then you get no food.

Yes, so personally that the people don't care about future generations anymore.

But suppose we convince everyone somehow to vote for the things they need. What prevents the opposite problem? Everyone thinks "I better makes sure to vote for food, shelter, and medicine, so everyone gets some." Then we overproduce those things, and never produce books, cars, toys, conlangs, or a million other things. You're asking everyone to know what the optimal level of production is, and no one really knows that.

Do you have some reason to think norms wouldn't be worked out as to how much food to vote for? I would start by voting for the amount of food I intend to purchase. If I miss my mark because I couldn't work hard enough, the extras go to charity.

The next problem is that, unlike the money market, there is no mechanism for actually producing what people want. If people all put down 500 votes for food, then the economy should spend 50% of its effort on food. And what makes it do that? Are 50% of the people now forced to become farmers? That's a recipe for disaster. (Remember Mao's order for the peasants to create iron in their backyards? He had a system which could force people to obey stupid orders. And its was a stupid order; the peasants knew nothing about iron-making. They made crappy iron.)

50% of the jobs IN THE PLANNING SYSTEM will be in the agricultural sector. Remember that people still have to apply for those jobs, and the private sector will still exist.

Next, there's nothing to make voters take ecology into account. I asked about beef because we now way over-produce beef, devoting a huge proportion of farmland simply to feeding cattle, and creating a major problem with methane, which helps cause climate change, as well as toxic amounts of manure and chemicals. Do you let the people vote for things that will destroy the ecosphere?

Absolutely. You are asking the people to save the ecosphere by vote too. Or are you suggesting we resort to green terror?

Or each other, for that matter?

Basic rights will be guaranteed by the constitution.

What if it reasonably costs 15% of the economy to provide health care, but people only vote for 5%? And the next year, because health care is so crappy, they decide to punish that sector by voting for even less of it.

What? If video game makers are too small on Patreon, has anyone ever punished them by pledging to even fewer of them?

If this is a problem for my system, it is a problem for the market too, which still exists, by the way.

Your system is like an eternal set of plebiscites, and that's one of the worst forms of democracy. People are not very good at thinking through complex issues, taking externalities into account, thinking of the whole of society rather than themselves, thinking five years ahead, etc. Admittedly, experts can be terrible too! All the more reason to be very careful about what we leave to voters and what we leave to experts.

What I think we can agree on is that it would be ideal for the people to be consulted in more detail. The weakest form of democracy, though it's better than nothing, is simply choosing one set of rulers. But it's not exactly fine-grained, and doesn't allow any nuances. It would be better if we could express a preference on a wide range of policy choices.

That's not very democratic of you.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'm going to assume, since your analogy is the market, that "votes" can be split between goods. It would be kind of absurd if a voter can only specify one good. So I take it the voter creates a sort of shopping list. For simplicity, everyone gets 1000 votes and splits them up on stuff. This is then used as a guide for production.

The first problem is that people would game the system-- or on a deeper level, it's not clear how a voter should try to game the system. Suppose I really really want the economy to produce video games. Then I should allocate all my votes to video games, assuming that other people will provide votes for food, shelter, medicine, etc. Now, maybe that's a good way for nerds or minorities to make sure they get what they want. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the total results will be balanced or even coherent. Maybe everyone wants video games. Oops, we forgot to produce any food.

Compare the money economy, which is like a vote with votes that matter personally. If you don't vote for food-- i.e. you buy no food-- then you get no food.

But suppose we convince everyone somehow to vote for the things they need. What prevents the opposite problem? Everyone thinks "I better makes sure to vote for food, shelter, and medicine, so everyone gets some." Then we overproduce those things, and never produce books, cars, toys, conlangs, or a million other things. You're asking everyone to know what the optimal level of production is, and no one really knows that.

...

What if it reasonably costs 15% of the economy to provide health care, but people only vote for 5%? And the next year, because health care is so crappy, they decide to punish that sector by voting for even less of it.

To "patch" this, I think a certain number of votes per subsection of the economy, and guaranteed production of certain necessities would be in order (votes being cast for what sorts of foods, with more niche things being covered by whatever form of a free market survives), and production of pharmaceuticals &c. based on the actual need for them (i.e. enough cancer-treating drugs to treat the average number of cases in a year plus some percentage above that in case there are a higher number of cases than usual, or less if there were fewer cases the preceding year, such that the level will be approximately the needed amount plus whatever margin-of-error percentage), so that people aren't going without, and we don't have any sort of weird and easily-prevented shortage of something necessary.

Books, languages, &c. are likely to be made by artists working independently (or by artists collectives, if we do away with big film and game studios as profit-driven enterprises, which might be desirable), and so I think the idea of the UBI, or some sort of universal needs guarantee, will make sure they have the ability to produce what they want to produce. I often think that, under a system where less labour is extracted, and less duress exerted, upon the populace, as under capitalism, the number of artists, writers, and the like, who would be freed up to create things, would provide us with more and better entertainment than we now have. I should like to know if there's any study that bears this out, or contradicts it.

The next problem is that, unlike the money market, there is no mechanism for actually producing what people want. If people all put down 500 votes for food, then the economy should spend 50% of its effort on food. And what makes it do that? Are 50% of the people now forced to become farmers? That's a recipe for disaster. (Remember Mao's order for the peasants to create iron in their backyards? He had a system which could force people to obey stupid orders. And its was a stupid order; the peasants knew nothing about iron-making. They made crappy iron.)

I think they may have put forward a system of man-hour credits (money in all but name), but money is already something of an abstraction. If society became cashless, but money still existed hypothetically (at least for a time), the idea that one needed to work (or might feel inclined to do something meaningful, depending on whether or not technology makes the continuation of human labour necessary, or largely eliminates it) would remain, and contribution to society itself become customary. Perhaps this is quixotic — it's an idea I developed for a fantasy setting, admittedly (most people in-world know what money was, but most people have occupations because they enjoy them and because they accept people working is necessary to the maintenance of society, &c.; they track use of goods and necessity of production by the actual amounts of things people use, and simply produce that plus the necessary margin); in-world magic also means they simply make fewer consumer goods, so there isn't any necessity for heavy industrialisation; the situations could, I think, in that regard, be considered a little disanalogous, but I thought it might be worth mentioning either way.

Next, there's nothing to make voters take ecology into account. I asked about beef because we now way over-produce beef, devoting a huge proportion of farmland simply to feeding cattle, and creating a major problem with methane, which helps cause climate change, as well as toxic amounts of manure and chemicals. Do you let the people vote for things that will destroy the ecosphere? Or each other, for that matter?

Presumably, we would still have laws and regulations as to how things could be produced. Within this economy (to go back to the previous point) there could also be certain incentives for producing desired or needed goods, but I'm not sure what they would be. It really is very hard to picture a society without money. On this point, however, I think investing in growing meat in bioreactors, thereby reducing intensive farming (and cruelty; also meat so produced would be technically vegan, I believe), would also be a good start. I think at least a baseline investment in science and research should be guaranteed somewhere. Advancement in science and technology seems to be one of the best ways to secure the advancement of a society.

Your system is like an eternal set of plebiscites, and that's one of the worst forms of democracy. People are not very good at thinking through complex issues, taking externalities into account, thinking of the whole of society rather than themselves, thinking five years ahead, etc. Admittedly, experts can be terrible too! All the more reason to be very careful about what we leave to voters and what we leave to experts.

What I think we can agree on is that it would be ideal for the people to be consulted in more detail. The weakest form of democracy, though it's better than nothing, is simply choosing one set of rulers. But it's not exactly fine-grained, and doesn't allow any nuances. It would be better if we could express a preference on a wide range of policy choices.

I think I may generally be more in accord with you over the form I personally think democracy ought to take; I tend to prefer various representative models (though current voting systems are problematic, as are those which tend to impose frequent minority governments, in contradiction of the popular will), and am not averse to constitutional monarchy where it already exists (though establishing a new monarchy, in our own world, would strike me as a rather odd thing to do). Of course, similar social and economic structures would not necessitate very much democracy: the above fantasy society seems to have grown directly out of a form of feudalism (at least based on what the stories I've set in it describe; I haven't actually sat down and worked out all the economics in detail; I'm starting to get the itch to, though — this is very interesting), and still has vestiges of that lingering round, too, probably skipping a capitalismesque stage, or at least speeding through it very quickly. The old Lords don't hold all the power, but seem to retain some.

[zompist]

FWIW, bones, I actually made a voting proposal similar to yours, but limited to the federal budget:

http://www.zompist.com/restructure.html

Now, I wrote that in the '90s when I was more optimistic, and didn't understand how entrenched reactionary ideas were. The people as a whole have better judgment than the experts in some areas, far worse judgment in others. Getting the division right is extremely tricky.

The first problem is that people would game the system-- or on a deeper level, it's not clear how a voter should try to game the system. Suppose I really really want the economy to produce video games. Then I should allocate all my votes to video games, assuming that other people will provide votes for food, shelter, medicine, etc. Now, maybe that's a good way for nerds or minorities to make sure they get what they want. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the total results will be balanced or even coherent. Maybe everyone wants video games. Oops, we forgot to produce any food.

First beef and now video games? Okay, can you seriously name one article that would tank the economy like this?

I'm not sure why you're getting hung up on the specific examples. The point here is strategic voting, something that comes up in most electoral systems. To an extent, this could even be a feature of the system: a group of voters can ensure that their favorite product is favored, even if the electorate as a whole doesn't care. But it's also a bug, because that group is also forcing basic goods to be underproduced.

Basically, people are going to over-value their favorite luxuries, and under-value basic goods, or things they don't normally use, or think they don't normally use. (For an example of the latter category, think of fundamental scientific research. Populist politicians already rant against "useless" research. But we wouldn't have consumer electronics, which everyone loves, if 19C researchers hadn't messed around completely unprofitably with electromagnetism.)

(Edit: This consideration applies even more to the market, where there is a profit motive, than it does to my system.)

No it doesn't, because to increase production of a good in the market, you have to increase prices, and that automatically decreases demand.

But suppose we convince everyone somehow to vote for the things they need. What prevents the opposite problem? Everyone thinks "I better makes sure to vote for food, shelter, and medicine, so everyone gets some." Then we overproduce those things, and never produce books, cars, toys, conlangs, or a million other things. You're asking everyone to know what the optimal level of production is, and no one really knows that.

Do you have some reason to think norms wouldn't be worked out as to how much food to vote for?

Yes, five thousand years of human history. Do you have a reason to believe voters would become prudent?

I mentioned beef for a reason: in the US, 67% of cropland is used for animal feed. (Worldwide, it's 36%.) Overproduction is a serious concern: that cropland is not available for feeding people; the runoff of pesticides and other chemicals pollutes groundwater; the amount of methane and manure produced is more than the environment can handle; overgrazing can reduce steppe to desert. Other goods have other penalties— e.g. if everyone overloads on electronics, we need to strip-mine for rare earths, and we're stressing the sources of non-renewable supplies like metal and plastics.

The market doesn't prevent this, obviously, but it discourages it by making in-demand products more expensive. The problem with votes is that they're costless. It's just as easy to spend 100 votes on beef as to spend them on lentils.

50% of the jobs IN THE PLANNING SYSTEM will be in the agricultural sector. Remember that people still have to apply for those jobs, and the private sector will still exist.

What makes people even want to take those jobs? People generally try to get off the farm the moment they can.

What if it reasonably costs 15% of the economy to provide health care, but people only vote for 5%? And the next year, because health care is so crappy, they decide to punish that sector by voting for even less of it.

What? If video game makers are too small on Patreon, has anyone ever punished them by pledging to even fewer of them?

It's how voters think now. "More money for education? They're doing a bad job now, why should we give them more money?"

[Ares Land]

FWIW, bones, I actually made a voting proposal similar to yours, but limited to the federal budget:

http://www.zompist.com/restructure.html

Now, I wrote that in the '90s when I was more optimistic, and didn't understand how entrenched reactionary ideas were. The people as a whole have better judgment than the experts in some areas, far worse judgment in others. Getting the division right is extremely tricky.

You might be interested to know that we get to vote on (a small part of) the budget in Paris: https://budgetparticipatif.paris.fr/bp/
(I know you read French, I'll try to dig up sources in English if anyone else's interested).

I can't say it's really a world-changing initiative, and it has its faults, but it's interesting.
Some proposals included the city helping out some specific businesses. Which is one way we can get planned economy to work.
(I'm not unhappy with the businesses that got help. One of them basically handles food orders to local farmers for you.)

[Raphael]

Not directly related to the recent posts, but I thought I might use this thread to post another one of my small translations - this time, a tale of how some people in East Germany were being screwed over both by the Cold War era Marxist system and by the post-Cold War era capitalist system. It's a short excerpt from Die Übernahme: Wie Ostdeutschland Teil der Bundesrepublik wurde by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk - something like The Takeover: How East Germany became a part of the Federal Republic. This time, I can recommend that you read the whole book, if you can read German and are into political non-fiction.

I should note that the original German version of what I've translated is available as part of the free sample provided by at least one e-book seller. I should also note that the jumping back and forth between the past and present tense when talking about past events is there in the original, and I've tried to preserve it as well as possible.

From "Die Übernahme" - ("The Takeover") - by Ilko-Sascha Kowalcuk.

Dieter died just a few days short of his 65th birthday. It was the year 1998. Nine years had passed since the fall of the wall, eight years since Germany had been united as a state: Beginnings of journeys. Hopes. Expectations. Disappointments. Bitterness. All one after another and all at the same time. It was an exciting time, including for Dieter. Finally the ultimate end. He couldn't even enjoy his retirement. In the GDR, everyone knew the joke: a good Communist dies on his 65th birthday, to avoid using resources of the empty state accounts - or goes to the West, in order to hurt the class enemy. Dieter had not gone to the West. It had come to him. He had been happy to finally have the West in the East.

Dieter had not had an untypical career. Having been thrown out of his old home with his brothers and his mother at the end of the last great war, he had only attended school for a short time somewhere in Brandenburg. He had to earn money, feed the family. Dieter became a mason - in postwar Germany a useful, much asked for, crisis-proof job. He built a lot, including after the end of the workday and on weekends. Toil and drudgery from the morning to the evening. Modest wealth arrived. He did not need it, but his two children were supposed to lack for nothing, to have it better than their parents. Soon, he no longer went to construction sites, but to school. Additional training. He wanted to be a role model for his children. This, Dieter was. His children studied. Their father had a career. Step by step. It didn't work without compromises. He joined the Party, the SED. He was not a Communist and never became one. But Dieter was thankful for the opportunities the Communists offered him. He took them, took part, with joining the Party as a necessary evil. He finally became director of a small construction company in the countryside, in the fertile Magdeburger Börde region. He toiled and drudged. There were enough reasons for despair. There was always a shortage of something. Building things in socialism was almost as impossible as building socialism itself. Dieter swore, toiled, occasionally had one drink too many out of anger and frustration. All completely normal. GDR. But somehow he always managed it to get everything done, somehow. Things went their socialist way.

Then 1989: in summer, for the first time, he and his wife are allowed to travel to the Federal Republic, to visit his brother, who had left before the Wall was built in 1961. His first trip leads him to a hardware store. For the first time in his life, Dieter loses control of himself: he cries, is speechless, although he had known it. Everything is available here aplenty, construction materials and tools, which he always has to scavenge for in his professional life. What kind of things he could built, if he wouldn't have these supply problems! What kind of wonderful problems he would have, then, solvable ones!

He travels back to the Anhalt region. Impressed, almost entranced by the West, horrified, discouraged by the East. A few weeks later, the Wall comes down. He hadn't done anything for that. The Fall of the Wall happened to him. Dieter is happy. He is 56 years old and pledges to start again, all engines firing, now, that he will finally be able to built the way he had always wanted to. He leaves the Party without much fuss, simply stops paying his membership dues. In the spring of 1990 he becomes CEO of a recently founded limited-liability corporation which now owns his construction company. How exactly did that happen? Privatization in the East will still be a source of mysteries years later. In any case, Dieter is a CEO now. He is motivated and engaged. What could still go wrong now? There are plenty of sales orders. The hardware stores are full. Everything is ready to start. A few credits to prime the pump can't really be a problem.

The neighboring company, including its real estate, but excluding its debts, has been sold to a Svabian entrepreneur for a symbolic price of one Mark in mid-1991. Real estate for one symbolic Mark! And no debts. Dieter is not from Stuttgart or Hamburg, from Düsseldorf or Munich, but from Magdeburg. His "old debts" are not canceled. He is told that his business is overly heavily indebted because of the "debts" that it had amassed during the 1970s and 1980s. That can only be a bad joke! Don't you have any idea what's going on? Old debts from the days of the GDR? Old debts as a dowry of the GDR economy? Don't you know how things worked when it came to debts in the GDR? That it was just an accounting trick in the centrally planned economy? It's unbelieveable! And why are old debts canceled for new owners from the West?

Many questions, no answers. Dieter is forced to make odious compromises. The employees, blue as well as white collar, agree to be payed less than the norm, so that no one has to be fired. The boss himself halves his own salary. Then, none is payed at all. Everyone agrees to that. Now things get risky. For months, the business can't pay for the mandatory retirement-, health-, and unemployment insurance of employees. The neighboring company had been closed immediately, the new owners never had any plans to preserve jobs; real estate for one Mark! They're still laughing today. Dieter fought, for his coworkers, for himself. It was no use. No one helped. No one was interested in ensuring that this old GDR building company with the new limited-liability corporation would survive. Banks refuse to make any more appointments for Dieter, the CEO. More and more debts amass, although there are plenty of sales orders. Many have similar problems, can't pay bills at all, or only after months-long delays. A vicious circle from which you can only escape if you have savings. No one from the East in the East has those. Dieter's business has many financial obligations, but no one pays those. Dieter becomes liable privately as well. The prosecution authorities get involved. Dieter gets ill. Cancer. Terminal. It ends really quickly. The ultimate end. Started with so much optimism. Landed so roughly. That was not just. He dies on the day for which he had his first court subpoena.

This story is not invented, or fictionalized, or created as a mosaic from many pieces. No, I did not just tell any story. It is the life of my wife's father, my father-in-law. I got to know him in 1990 and experienced all that piece by piece. The hopes, the tragedy, the end.

[Torco]

I don't think the democratic economy problem is all that hard to solve: and at any rate, one shouldn't try to be utopian and pretend to have all the answers beforehand: different revolutions have and will continue to have different notions of how to implement socialism. also, socialism isn't a boolean, just like democracy isn't a boolean. is the US a a political democracy, or not? like, is it a country where political democracy is a thing? well, the people do effect policy and law through their votes, to some degree, and the conflicts in the congress and whatever are roughly reflective of the conflicts of the society: it's political laws reflect the character of the nation in some ways, y'all love your guns, and so on. But also it has a lot of undemocratic bullshit going on: money in politics, the electoral college, the military industrial complex, regulatory capture, gerrymandering and I'm sure a lot more. still, everyone's in agreement that it is more democratic than, say, ancient Sparta. most people agree that it's also more of a democracy than, say, Saudi Arabia. would it be even more of a democracy if, say, they really observed one person one vote? of course. This kind of shades of gray outlook, admittedly, offers some interesting perspectives: Napoleon was a democratic reformer, cause the dissolution of the aristocracy does democratize political power... or at least he is if you agree that it did, which seems intuitive.

so like, why do we not treat economic democracy the same way? like, broadly speaking capitalism is in some ways a lot more economically democratic than, say, palace command economies where coordination occurs by decree of a military leader. it is more socialist than the ancien regime, cause the stuff the liberals say is not totally wrong: consumers have some power in the "free market". They just have not that much of it.

There's a lot of capital s Socialisms I'd happily throw my lot in with that don't propose central planning: Still, central planning isn't that awful. If you have a state that behaves decently democratically, and those guys are writing the plans, then barring overwhelming corruption you'd have a kind of economic planning that was democratic, just like in liberal republics we say the laws are democratic cause they were promulgated by a democratically elected congress or senate or whatever. Like, the details seem to me a matter of organizational design: an institution doing the planning of some kind, beholden to the democratic apparatus in various ways. they'd be like a fourth power of government, subject to the usual checks and balances. Would you prefer it being collegiate, kind of like the supreme court? presidents designate planners, there's a dozen and they're drawn from managers and social scientists? kinda like the lawyers and judges! or maybe they're like a congress, elected directly and with committees dealing each with the details of this or that? I'm partial to plebiscites to pick plans, or budget drafts or something, you only need them every five years or so... I'm told by my less socialistic friends that that is, apparently, too much democracy and would in practice work horribly. I mean, maybe, but then again they said the same thing about liberal republics.

Also, I dispute this idea that soviet central planning "didn't work". it worked fine for fifty years, give or take: better than fine, the ruskies went from feudal hellhole to losing the space race, full-of-nukes, america-is-worried, modern industrial standard of living during central planning. And the people worked fewer hours, had more vacation, ate better, and weren't terrorized by unemployment. Yes, some were terrorized by the government, but so it is in the US. capitalism clearly doesn't guarantee protection against police brutality or oppressive governments, as the history of capitalist countries clearly attests. The crisis that put an end to the soviet union was political in nature, involving nationalism, perestroika, and a conflict between local vs central government officials.

You might be interested to know that we get to vote on (a small part of) the budget in Paris: https://budgetparticipatif.paris.fr/bp/
(I know you read French, I'll try to dig up sources in English if anyone else's interested).

nice!

[Ares Land]

In turn, I dispute the notion that the Soviet Union wasn't that bad.
See how bad famine got in the Ukraine, for instance. While things never got that bad after WWII, the Soviet Union had constant trouble with its food supply (a factor which did contribute to the downfall of the Soviet Union.)

The United States has of course its share of political oppression, but it's not equivalent to what happened in the USSR, which had the Gulag, political 'disappearances', systematic censorship, etc.
(I attended an exhibition on Soviet artists last year... The dates and causes of death of artists tell a fairly dark story.)

Central planning isn't necessarily that bad, of course! In fact we had a degree of it in France (and I think in many other European countries) and it was definitely a factor in post-WWII growth. (We're certainly not doing any better now that we got rid of it.)

I do agree with your idea that socialism is more of a spectrum than a binary switch!

[mèþru]

All of extended my family born before the 80s lived in the Soviet Union. The US is no Soviet Union. I am no great friend of the US and think it has and is running an international empire of evil. But the Soviet Union was many, many times worse.

A lot of the Soviet Central Planning's success is obscured by the fact that they presided over heavy industrialisation, which is a one time trick to dramatically improve output. Unlike capitalism, you can't accrue additional value above production via intrest or investment, so there is a more limited pool of money to be reinvested into research on how to improve output by new technology.

The crisis that put an end to the soviet union was political in nature, involving nationalism, perestroika, and a conflict between local vs central government officials.

The political was the result of economic downturns in the 80s Soviet Union, due to rampant corruption, mismanagement and a resource curse that's been affecting the Soviet Union for a long time by that point. These could all have been avoidable, but I doubt the Soviet system could ever have reached GDP parity with the US without a larger, white market private sector (pretty much everybody bought on the black market) and a finance industry.

As I said before, every Western country does central planning to a degree. A national budget is central planning. When a national bank sets interest rates, that's central planning. Currency being controlled by the government is central planning. These are good things to do; capitalism would be launching into recessions much more often and without stimulus or bailout if banks were free to make money as they pleased. In fact I think when it comes to finance industry the US needs even more central planning. I definitely don't believe that the aspects outside of making a budget should be democratic - most people don't understand how to run things or about macroeconomics, and educating everybody about it is inefficient allocation of resources, especially of time. Even in the legslative aspect: much of legislation in parliamentary systems is drafted by non-partisan experts hired by the government (in the sense Americans use administration).

[mèþru]

I used to toy with replacing money as a way of doing things. Part of why I learned some basic economics was that I wanted to understand the current system in order to replace it (most I wanted to learn so I could figure out economic history of my conworld, but I learned mainly modern day demand-side economics which is not very useful to determining pre-modern problems)

Every idea I had was worse than money, and the reason why is that I did not understand what money is. Using a votes based system has the same problem. Indeed it is also the problem of when central planning fixes prices (although I do think there are some areas, like rent, where there should be a mandated price ceiling, but that's the exception not the rule). In mainstream economics (or as the far-left calls it, neoliberal mumbo jumbo), price is the map, value is the territory. Economic value is not intrinsic to a commodity or service; it is dependant on marginal utility. This is why, for instance, life-saving suregery is so expensive in a privatised healthcare system - the value of the surgery to the consumer who is about to die is pretty much infinite. A vote does not reflect economic value at all: A vote does not show a transfer of value between people or orgnisations, and the amount of votes needed to pass a resolution does not change to reflect value changing.

@zompist
I was pretty influenced as a teenager by the whole restructure article, and still pretty am. I would love to see a new version updated for 2020.
I think that the public should be able to vote on a portion of the budget every four years or so as a non-binding referendum. Explicitly only on issues outside of military, foreign embassies and aid programs. Not sure how I'd structure the options; departments and independent agencies are too broad in scope but anything else seems like too many options to choose from.
One thing I see as really needing an update is the "lose the South bit". In the wake of stringent anti-abortion laws, tough voter ID and the ongoing political persecution of black people it's not just no longer applicable, but with hindisght seems like it was never applicable - these were issues in the 90s too, just people were less woke about them (although to be fair in the 90s the police were less infiltrated by the far-right than they are today).

[Torco]

Of course it was worse! it had no democratic tradition, amazing levels of backwardness, enormous poverty and the rest of it. still, its achievements are very real, and the notion that it always had hunger is untrue: according to the very CIA the soviets ate more nutritious diets in 83, for example. It's fair enough that economic stagnation had set in a bit before the fall, but that was the only economic crisis in the entire history of the union: compare capitalism, which gets one every decade or two, and seems to be stuck in one. and there's no reason why an economic crisis has to cause total collapse, countries survive them routinely.

[mèþru]

Depends on the crisis. A crisis related to a resource curse generally does cause total collapse regardless of economic system. And it is very inaccurate to stay the late Soviet stagnation was its only economic crisis. My father's family immigrated to Israel before that and he remembers economic problems in the Soviet Union from when he was a child.

I definitely don't agree with the claim that the people were always starving - that's definitely not the account I got from my family. And despite all the Soviet Union did to Jews, despite even the fact that they disappeared one of my great-grandparents, the feelings my family has towards that time are mixed rather than just negative. We love "Nu pogodi", we play popular music from decorated Soviet musicians and we have pride in one of my relatives' service as a doctor in the Red Army.

[rotting bones]

FWIW, bones, I actually made a voting proposal similar to yours, but limited to the federal budget:

http://www.zompist.com/restructure.html

Now, I wrote that in the '90s when I was more optimistic, and didn't understand how entrenched reactionary ideas were. The people as a whole have better judgment than the experts in some areas, far worse judgment in others. Getting the division right is extremely tricky.

The money budget is different from allocation by vote.

I'm not sure why you're getting hung up on the specific examples. The point here is strategic voting, something that comes up in most electoral systems. To an extent, this could even be a feature of the system: a group of voters can ensure that their favorite product is favored, even if the electorate as a whole doesn't care. But it's also a bug, because that group is also forcing basic goods to be underproduced.

I'm only trying to envision a realistic scenario where this would happen.

Basically, people are going to over-value their favorite luxuries, and under-value basic goods, or things they don't normally use, or think they don't normally use. (For an example of the latter category, think of fundamental scientific research. Populist politicians already rant against "useless" research. But we wouldn't have consumer electronics, which everyone loves, if 19C researchers hadn't messed around completely unprofitably with electromagnetism.)

Trust me, if you had ever consumed rationed luxury goods, you'd know those industries are best left to the capitalists.

No it doesn't, because to increase production of a good in the market, you have to increase prices, and that automatically decreases demand.

Under this theory, how did the oil industry corner the market through low gas prices? The way I see it, the market doesn't just satisfy demand. It generates the specific demands that maximize the profit of capitalists.

Yes, five thousand years of human history. Do you have a reason to believe voters would become prudent?

Firstly, there's the favorite argument of contemporary economics. If there is a scarcity of some article, I will ask for more of it. If there is a glut of something else, I will subtract from its votes to add to the former. This goes on until supply and demand reach an equilibrium.

I mentioned beef for a reason: in the US, 67% of cropland is used for animal feed. (Worldwide, it's 36%.) Overproduction is a serious concern: that cropland is not available for feeding people; the runoff of pesticides and other chemicals pollutes groundwater; the amount of methane and manure produced is more than the environment can handle; overgrazing can reduce steppe to desert. Other goods have other penalties— e.g. if everyone overloads on electronics, we need to strip-mine for rare earths, and we're stressing the sources of non-renewable supplies like metal and plastics.

The market doesn't prevent this, obviously, but it discourages it by making in-demand products more expensive. The problem with votes is that they're costless. It's just as easy to spend 100 votes on beef as to spend them on lentils.

This is the feature, not a bug. With the profit motive mitigated, it will be realistic to ask people to vote on ethical considerations, which is simply idealistic lunacy under capitalism.

What makes people even want to take those jobs? People generally try to get off the farm the moment they can.

Because they were fired from this job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl_Ew0c4T9g and they are hungry. I'm starting to suspect you might have forgotten a few crucial aspects of what it's like to live in this economy.

It's how voters think now. "More money for education? They're doing a bad job now, why should we give them more money?"

Is that really about punishing educators or just paying lower taxes? People cannot vote from ethical motives under capitalism on pain of homelessness.

[rotting bones]

(or as the far-left calls it, neoliberal mumbo jumbo)

Don't forget to mention that this so-called "far-left" includes a substantial body of economists with impeccable academic credentials.

A vote does not reflect economic value at all: A vote does not show a transfer of value between people or orgnisations, and the amount of votes needed to pass a resolution does not change to reflect value changing.

I don't believe in the existence of value. There is only the distribution of labor and its products: https://youtu.be/Hb6dXR6AfXE (https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/1350/)

A crisis related to a resource curse generally does cause total collapse regardless of economic system.

Capitalist crises are man-made disasters. What's more, everyone who is familiar with them knows this.

[mèþru]

Mainstream economics is called mainstream for a reason. It's the most broadly accepted by academics as factual.

The lack of common ground in such a fundamental concept as what is economic value is why I find debates on capitalism vs communism with the goal to persuade, as opposed to debates just for enriching knowledge of other people's beliefs, rather pointless. I see the theory of marginal utilty as a fundamental theory of economy, to the point that it doesn't just describe economics of human production and consumption but that it can describe a wide variety of logistical situations. Much of the theory of biological evolution really follows the same principles. So for a democratic socialist to say that the theory is false to me is like somebody trying to deny gravity is real. At least it is a step above an anarchist who told me that it is "unethical", as if natural laws of reality can be said to have an ethical nature. Is gravity unethical?

To be fair, I suppose I seem as unreasonable to those who reject the theory of marginal utility as those people seem to me. That's not really a big deal - people who are big into astrology and tarot cards can be friends with those who reject any kind of magical thinking - but it does mean that in this topic all one can do is learn and befriend, but rarely ever agree.