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[zompist]

Usually I'd expect a leftist to oppose ultra-rich, monocultural corporations and champion diversity, but I guess it's opposite day.

I do, but I'm in favor of state-sponsored art chosen by popular vote.

Artists should do what they want. If they can't, fuck your totalitarian state.

[WeepingElf]

The idea of companies owned by the employees who democratically elect their management is very attractive, but it is not without problems. Each employee joining the company would have to buy into it, [...]

What? I've never heard of a plan for worker management that requires that workers pay to join.

This isn't just theoretical— look at the Mondragon corporation, which is a network of cooperatives with 70,000 workers.

OK, then I haven't understood the thing well enough. But somebody has to buy the equipment, right?

[rotting bones]

Artists should do what they want. If they can't, fuck your totalitarian state.

Anyone can do what they like. But state sponsorship should also exist for struggling artists whose work is in demand.

... as I have explained many, many times. I once even enumerated all the logical combinations for you. Just substitute "enterprise" with "studio":

1. State-sponsored art should exist.

2. Non-state-sponsored art should exist.

...

Furthermore, it is impossible for my account of popular vote to create a totalitarian state. I'm only using votes to measure demand instead of money in order to prevent income and inherited wealth from skewing the analysis of what is actually in demand.

[rotting bones]

My basic problem with capitalism is that I don't believe what the market supplies is what is actually in demand. What the market supplies is what is in demand by rich people. This is because the market measures demand by dollars spent, and rich people have the dollars to spend.

[Raphael]

My basic problem with capitalism is that I don't believe what the market supplies is what is actually in demand. What the market supplies is what is in demand by rich people. This is because the market measures demand by dollars spent, and rich people have the dollars to spend.

That's a good point on its own, but doesn't it kind of contradict your earlier claim, when talking about energy consumption, that the energy consumed by major industries is mostly used to produce goods consumed by non-rich people?

[rotting bones]

My basic problem with capitalism is that I don't believe what the market supplies is what is actually in demand. What the market supplies is what is in demand by rich people. This is because the market measures demand by dollars spent, and rich people have the dollars to spend.

That's a good point on its own, but doesn't it kind of contradict your earlier claim, when talking about energy consumption, that the energy consumed by major industries is mostly used to produce goods consumed by non-rich people?

Rich people want non-rich people to scrape by to make them richer. I want the non-rich to have more power than that.

Also, I'm not a Marxist and I don't support Leninism. I will not support any socialist project that is not underpinned by robust human rights guarantees.

[Raphael]

Rich people want non-rich people to scrape by to make them richer. I want the non-rich to have more power than that.

No disagreement from me.

[xxx]

To explain what has changed due to scaleability...

but is this scalability desirable...

if we take happiness as our objective, do we want:
the multiplication of objects, their standardization, their automation,
to have contact only with automatic systems
or through systems that filter our opinions and the words of others we've never met,
and outside this virtual world to live in an overpopulated real world riddled with prohibitions, ...

in short, can we be happy in a materialistic paradise,
that is a communist society where the big night is reserved only for a capitalist minority...

this big night consisting, moreover, of living outside this materialistic paradise:
having only unique objects,
personalized treatment only with human beings beings face to face,
far from the crowds where even to hunt wild animals,...

everything that was normal for everyone before...
before the digital revolution, the industrial revolution and even the Neolithic revolution...
human paradise still seems to be linked to the state of nature...

[rotting bones]

Rich people want non-rich people to scrape by to make them richer. I want the non-rich to have more power than that.

No disagreement from me.

I should also clarify that rich people don't have to be nefarious. The problem is that some amount of nefariousness and/or obliviousness is required in order to remain a mover and shaker in a capitalist economy for significant lengths of time.

[Raphael]

OK, this whole current discussion started when someone - although, as it happens, that someone is not a socialist - complained about how there are supposedly too many descriptions of problems, and not enough proposals for solutions.

So perhaps I might post a rough first draft of a proposed solution to the problem of how to run an economy.

For now, I'll only talk about basic economic structures, and not about things like environmental protection or basic income or anti-discrimination measures or health and safety measures. That's not because I think those latter things are not important, but simply because I'm not trying to solve all the world's problems in this one post.

First, all economic entities - what a capitalist economy would call "businesses" - are legally owned by the public. The public retains all ultimate rights to exercise control over them, and to reap the benefits, if any, of their activities.

However, that is not interpreted as meaning that the people in charge of economic entities - which I'll call "EEs" for the rest of this post - are selected or appointed by "the state", or "the government", or something or someone like that. Instead, they can be chosen in many different ways. Perhaps elected by employees, or by customers, or by suppliers, or by the local public where their EE is active, or perhaps, if the EE is seen as especially important, by the legislature of a larger area. Or by any kind of combination of those groups. There might be enough variation in the details of this process that no two EEs get their managers picked in the exact same way, or grant their managers, internally, the exact same amount of authority over internal decisions.

At the same time, there is still a certain amount of space for what capitalists would call "entrepreneurship". This happens in the way new EEs are initially set up.

There are a number of public organisations, institutions, agencies, and so on, that have the authority to authorize new EEs. Individuals, or small groups of individuals, can bring proposals for new EEs to any such institution. If one of those institutions rejects their proposal, they can try another one. If an institution approves a proposal for a new EE, it also provides what, in a capitalist economy, would be called the "seed capital" for the EE.

Now, if you, or you and a small group of people, get approval for a new EE, then you, or you and your small group, get to be in charge of that EE for five (5) years. During that time, you can only be removed from that position in really exceptional circumstances. If it should turn out that you really are the kind of brilliant, dedicated, driven, visionary entrepreneur-hero type that capitalist propagandists love to go on and on about, then you can work your magic during those five years, and hopefully create, or inspire others to create, a lot of great new things for the world. There might even be an unwritten, informal custom that if your first five years are seen as a success, you get re-appointed for as long as you want, or until people get sick of you, afterwards.

In such a system, it would probably be unavoidable that there would also be an unofficial, or perhaps downright illegal, part of the economy which would be a lot more decidedly capitalist. This factor, together with possible high salaries for managers, or for skilled professionals, would still lead to certain inequalities in wealth. To keep that kind of thing from getting out of hands, there would be a hard, non-negotiable upper cap on how much wealth each individual would be allowed to own - perhaps 10 million 2023 Euros or US dollars, adjusted for inflation and converted into applicable currencies. Own more stuff than that, and it gets confiscated, no ifs and no buts.

Finally, to initially popularize the ideas that I just talked about, and perhaps help them gain political traction, someone might produce a science-fiction sitcom set in a society and economy that is run along those lines, centered on a few friends and acquaintances who keep trying to start new EEs, with varying degrees of success.

[Raphael]

To explain what has changed due to scaleability...

but is this scalability desirable...

If you would have paid attention, you might have noticed that that question is exactly what zompist was talking about all the time in this discussion.

[keenir]

this big night consisting, moreover, of living outside this materialistic paradise:
having only unique objects,
personalized treatment only with human beings beings face to face,
far from the crowds where even to hunt wild animals,...

I'm glad I don't have to hunt animals - I'd've been stomped into paste long ago.

Rich people want non-rich people to scrape by to make them richer. I want the non-rich to have more power than that.

No disagreement from me.

I should also clarify that rich people don't have to be nefarious. The problem is that some amount of nefariousness and/or obliviousness is required in order to remain a mover and shaker in a capitalist economy for significant lengths of time.

so...either someone is nefarious, or they're not a mover and shaker?

Let me give a concrete example of how reducing energy consumption will hurt the working class: If energy becomes more expensive, then so will transportation. If transportation becomes expensive, then economies of scale will recede. If economies of scale recede, then essential goods will become drastically more expensive. This will hit workers more powerfully than any other class.

Saving the planet is important. I'd just like to do it without committing yet another genocide that gets swept under the rug.

0.o
How did you go from workers get hit by costs from energy consumption reduction to genocide?

[Raphael]

this big night consisting, moreover, of living outside this materialistic paradise:
having only unique objects,
personalized treatment only with human beings beings face to face,
far from the crowds where even to hunt wild animals,...

I'm glad I don't have to hunt animals - I'd've been stomped into paste long ago.

Agreed.

[KathTheDragon]

The idea of companies owned by the employees who democratically elect their management is very attractive, but it is not without problems. Each employee joining the company would have to buy into it, [...]

What? I've never heard of a plan for worker management that requires that workers pay to join.

This isn't just theoretical— look at the Mondragon corporation, which is a network of cooperatives with 70,000 workers.

OK, then I haven't understood the thing well enough. But somebody has to buy the equipment, right?

My understanding is that it's paid for by company revenue, as decided by the workers. Someone in particular would place the order, but not out of their own pocket.

Edit: in the case of CERN and similar entities that make no revenue themselves, replace "revenue" with "public funding"

[WeepingElf]

What? I've never heard of a plan for worker management that requires that workers pay to join.

This isn't just theoretical— look at the Mondragon corporation, which is a network of cooperatives with 70,000 workers.

OK, then I haven't understood the thing well enough. But somebody has to buy the equipment, right?

My understanding is that it's paid for by company revenue, as decided by the workers. Someone in particular would place the order, but not out of their own pocket.

Edit: in the case of CERN and similar entities that make no revenue themselves, replace "revenue" with "public funding"

I see. So the employees don't pay for it. That makes sense.

[WeepingElf]

OK, this whole current discussion started when someone - although, as it happens, that someone is not a socialist - complained about how there are supposedly too many descriptions of problems, and not enough proposals for solutions.

There is no shortage of proposals for solutions! My point is that there is too little entertaining fiction about them. The solutions are known, but they are "hidden" in non-fiction books and scholarly papers few people read. Books that describe the solutions, but do not tell stories about them. I don't know how many people would read works like Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (which is not perfect but quite good, and I enjoyed reading it, and recommend it) or the stories featured in Solarpunk Magazine, but I feel that there is an opportunity rarely taken, and I am collecting ideas for such stories and novels, some of which I am even going to work into rock songs.

And yes, I am sceptical of socialism, though I do not reject it outright. I see it as an idea that sounds nice but is not without problems, and I don't see how majorities for it could be achieved in liberal democracies. Rather, I am a left-leaning liberal.

[hwhatting]

I have the feeling that socialism, rather than leading to post-scarcity, requires it to work. And how do we achieve post-scarcity in a finite world? We are already over-exploiting our planet now.

I don't know if this is a full solution, but a good start would be to stop imposing artificial scarcity for the sake of profit! We already produce more than enough food to feed all of humanity, we already have the technology to produce enough energy to power the whole planet, and we have the means to provide housing to everyone who doesn't have it. The main and perhaps only reason we're not doing any of these things is that it's profitable not to.

I don't think that's the main reason. There are examples of European capitalist welfare states that mostly have eliminated hunger and homelessness*); the reason that it hasn't done completely is that voters don't care enough about eliminating them completely. On a worldwide basis, the reason is the existence of the nation state, and again, that voters in rich countries care more about spending their tax money on things nearer to home than on lifting poor countries out of poverty.
*) I'm not sure you can eliminate homelessness 100%; even the Soviet Union had homeless people; those basically were people actively striving to fall through the cracks in the system because they liked the lifestyle.

[WeepingElf]

I have the feeling that socialism, rather than leading to post-scarcity, requires it to work. And how do we achieve post-scarcity in a finite world? We are already over-exploiting our planet now.

I don't know if this is a full solution, but a good start would be to stop imposing artificial scarcity for the sake of profit! We already produce more than enough food to feed all of humanity, we already have the technology to produce enough energy to power the whole planet, and we have the means to provide housing to everyone who doesn't have it. The main and perhaps only reason we're not doing any of these things is that it's profitable not to.

I don't think that's the main reason. There are examples of European capitalist welfare states that mostly have eliminated hunger and homelessness*); the reason that it hasn't done completely is that voters don't care enough about eliminating them completely. On a worldwide basis, the reason is the existence of the nation state, and again, that voters in rich countries care more about spending their tax money on things nearer to home than on lifting poor countries out of poverty.
*) I'm not sure you can eliminate homelessness 100%; even the Soviet Union had homeless people; those basically were people actively striving to fall through the cracks in the system because they liked the lifestyle.

Yes. And these successful welfare states aren't socialist, even if they have implemented some ideas originally proposed by socialists, and brought into the political discussions and implemented by socialist (or formerly socialist) parties. To some people of course, especially in the United States, these ideas are socialist enough to call them "socialism", usually people who think these things ought not to be done, and that it is not the government's fault if poor people starve or freeze to death.

The main problem with the current Western European welfare states is that their resource base is not sustainable (fossil fuels and all that); while these problem needs to be addressed, I don't think that the political and economic system needs to be overthrown - rather, some conditions under which it is running need to be changed. The socialists are IMHO proposing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and as I have said here twice, they are barking up the wrong tree: it doesn't help if the smokestacks are owned by "the people" if they continue smoking, so to say.

[Travis B.]

OK, this whole current discussion started when someone - although, as it happens, that someone is not a socialist - complained about how there are supposedly too many descriptions of problems, and not enough proposals for solutions.

So perhaps I might post a rough first draft of a proposed solution to the problem of how to run an economy.

For now, I'll only talk about basic economic structures, and not about things like environmental protection or basic income or anti-discrimination measures or health and safety measures. That's not because I think those latter things are not important, but simply because I'm not trying to solve all the world's problems in this one post.

First, all economic entities - what a capitalist economy would call "businesses" - are legally owned by the public. The public retains all ultimate rights to exercise control over them, and to reap the benefits, if any, of their activities.

However, that is not interpreted as meaning that the people in charge of economic entities - which I'll call "EEs" for the rest of this post - are selected or appointed by "the state", or "the government", or something or someone like that. Instead, they can be chosen in many different ways. Perhaps elected by employees, or by customers, or by suppliers, or by the local public where their EE is active, or perhaps, if the EE is seen as especially important, by the legislature of a larger area. Or by any kind of combination of those groups. There might be enough variation in the details of this process that no two EEs get their managers picked in the exact same way, or grant their managers, internally, the exact same amount of authority over internal decisions.

At the same time, there is still a certain amount of space for what capitalists would call "entrepreneurship". This happens in the way new EEs are initially set up.

There are a number of public organisations, institutions, agencies, and so on, that have the authority to authorize new EEs. Individuals, or small groups of individuals, can bring proposals for new EEs to any such institution. If one of those institutions rejects their proposal, they can try another one. If an institution approves a proposal for a new EE, it also provides what, in a capitalist economy, would be called the "seed capital" for the EE.

Now, if you, or you and a small group of people, get approval for a new EE, then you, or you and your small group, get to be in charge of that EE for five (5) years. During that time, you can only be removed from that position in really exceptional circumstances. If it should turn out that you really are the kind of brilliant, dedicated, driven, visionary entrepreneur-hero type that capitalist propagandists love to go on and on about, then you can work your magic during those five years, and hopefully create, or inspire others to create, a lot of great new things for the world. There might even be an unwritten, informal custom that if your first five years are seen as a success, you get re-appointed for as long as you want, or until people get sick of you, afterwards.

In such a system, it would probably be unavoidable that there would also be an unofficial, or perhaps downright illegal, part of the economy which would be a lot more decidedly capitalist. This factor, together with possible high salaries for managers, or for skilled professionals, would still lead to certain inequalities in wealth. To keep that kind of thing from getting out of hands, there would be a hard, non-negotiable upper cap on how much wealth each individual would be allowed to own - perhaps 10 million 2023 Euros or US dollars, adjusted for inflation and converted into applicable currencies. Own more stuff than that, and it gets confiscated, no ifs and no buts.

Finally, to initially popularize the ideas that I just talked about, and perhaps help them gain political traction, someone might produce a science-fiction sitcom set in a society and economy that is run along those lines, centered on a few friends and acquaintances who keep trying to start new EEs, with varying degrees of success.

One question I have is what about projects like my zeptoforth? Would that be an officially regulated enterprise? Would I have had to write official proposals for it? Would I have to jump through official hoops prior to being allowed to create it? And would I be an official "entrepreneur" if I did not?

Of course, zeptoforth is not for profit - I have not made a cent off of it, and indeed all the money that has gone into it has been out of my own pocket. Strictly speaking, though, it has not been a single person project, as it has incorporated code contributed by other individuals. And while I am by far the largest contributor to it, and the vast majority of the source code files have my copyright notice on them, I am not its "owner" in the sense of being a proprietor - anyone can fork it and do with it as they see fit as it is under the MIT license, a permissive free software license.

So what would you say about zeptoforth and the many other free/open source projects like it out there?

[Ares Land]

Let me give a concrete example of how reducing energy consumption will hurt the working class: If energy becomes more expensive, then so will transportation. If transportation becomes expensive, then economies of scale will recede. If economies of scale recede, then essential goods will become drastically more expensive. This will hit workers more powerfully than any other class.

Saving the planet is important. I'd just like to do it without committing yet another genocide that gets swept under the rug.

Getting back on this point...
I think one point about degrowth that is often overlooked is that it makes a lot of sense for some countries, and no sense at all in others.

Typically developing countries need economic growth and their energy consumption will increase.

In the West, though... GDP per capita in France has doubled between 1990 and 2015. As far as I can see standards of living have not significantly improved since.
As for energy consumption... Our energy use is still highly inefficient (though there have been improvements.)

In some ways cheap transportation can be damaging. No offence to Chileans or Canadians... but we don't need to import apples from Chili, or mustard from Canada.