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On Moral Superiority

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Re: On Moral Superiority

#51

Post by nikhilgk »

astine wrote: post #42
nikhilgk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a communist society, the state owns everything. They own all natural resources, the industries that processes them, the supply chains, the labor and the economy. Profits and margins are not the objectives and there is no competition. So overall, the expenses to the state are far lesser than in a capitalistic society. Imagine if the US government owned IBM, Boeing, Lockheed, all the mines, had the cheapest yet most…

Except that, in the united States at least, it doesn't work that way. Public works are significantly less efficient than private works. It is very common in the US for a public entity to spend many times as much on a work as a private company. The incentive systems in the private sector are just that much much better. This is in fact one of the arguments for a capitalist society. If a command economy were capable of…

Public work in the US cannot be a good comparison. Workers in communist Russia must have other motivations to be efficient - patriotism and pride in their work for some, but more likely, fear of the state and lack of alternatives. Either way, my point was not that they had an efficient or scalable model, but that the government can throw in any resource they have at making more weapons - even at the expense of starving millions.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#52

Post by sophacles »

locopati wrote: post #38
bpyne wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?

I see young people buying farms as a form of back-to-the-land. Localism seems to capture eating locally grown foods & buying locally made goods. Not saying these are real movements with web sites and books about them, just words to capture trends.

They are real movements with websites and books about them. "buy local", "food not lawns", "locavore" are sample phrases to google for.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#53

Post by jwhitlark »

rbanffy wrote: post #45
astine wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Nuking 2 cities was more a weapons test than a way to shorten a war. You'd think nuking one city would have been enough for that... The Americans didn't have to nuke any cities to test the nuclear bomb, they had already measured it's destructive capacity in the dessert. There is a belief among some historians that dropping the bomb was a way to impress the USSR and this idea does have merit. As for the second b…

> They had a notion that the bomb was incredibly expensive to make and were gambling that the US couldn't make another. Is there any evidence of that? Any official communication inside the Japanese government?

There were three days in between the two nukes. The Japanese govt. had observers report back at the end of the first day. People forget that the US had already destroyed ~85% of the top 60 cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exempted so they could serve as undamaged test cases.

The Japanese strategy, once it became clear they were losing the war, was to increase the cost in order to force concessions from the Allies. The atomic bomb, by changing the equation to one plane, one bomb, one city destroyed that hope.

The Japanese high command didn't surrender because they lost two more cities, they surrendered because the US demonstrated that it could annihilate cities without giving any opportunity to strike back.

For better or worse, wars aren't won by killing people, they're won by killing hope.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#54

Post by kragen »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
jargon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading a book about Roads that talks about roads from brazil to the pacific. The author mentions a story about seeing a teen in South America, Venezuela iirc, wearing a t-shirt with bin laden's picture on it and the author asked the kid why he is wearing the shirt. The teen says, "Because he is a defender of the world's poor." Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? Is…

> Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? > Is bin Laden the new Che in South America? No way. And, BTW, only angry teens wear Che t-shirts these days.

In Buenos Aires, most people don't wear T-shirts, but Che is a pretty popular image. He's right up there with Homer Simpson and Bob Marley.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#55

Post by gnosis »

astine wrote: post #42
nikhilgk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a communist society, the state owns everything. They own all natural resources, the industries that processes them, the supply chains, the labor and the economy. Profits and margins are not the objectives and there is no competition. So overall, the expenses to the state are far lesser than in a capitalistic society. Imagine if the US government owned IBM, Boeing, Lockheed, all the mines, had the cheapest yet most…

Except that, in the united States at least, it doesn't work that way. Public works are significantly less efficient than private works. It is very common in the US for a public entity to spend many times as much on a work as a private company. The incentive systems in the private sector are just that much much better. This is in fact one of the arguments for a capitalist society. If a command economy were capable of…

You might not know (or forget) Stalin's various purges of some of the most brilliant and effective people the USSR (along with millions of others), not to mention the tens of millions of Soviet citizens who died when their country was ravaged during WW2.

There was also the fear and terror the country was ruled by, resulting in a state of constant paranoia among the citizenry. Not to mention the cronyism inherent in that system, by which only the most "loyal" (not to the state, but to their bosses) had any kind of future. And then there was the massive and vicious oppression and persecution of various minorities across the nation, and of the nationals of the various countries which the Soviet Union invaded and absorbed.

And even at the start of the Soviet Union, there were the millions who were killed during the Russian revolutions, which radically restructured the societies which made up the Soviet Union.

All these factors and many more contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. It's just not nearly as simple as saying that "capitalism is more efficient than communism".

Re: On Moral Superiority

#56

Post by jerf »

borism wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth and money aren't the same. They're related, but they don't freely interconvert, and are generally people overestimate the degree to which they are related. Building ICBMs requires not just money, but wealth. Infrastructure, the ability to divert your smartest people to building ICBMs because they aren't needed to solve "the food problem", ability to create a system where smart people can become educated, etc.…

building ICBMs has 0 correlation to wealth

Which is why Somalia is just full of the things. And they were invented circa 2,000 BC.

You're so far off I despair of even imagining where to begin trying to correct you. You have to have a base level of wealth to even come close to building them.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#57

Post by jbz »

rdl wrote: post #20
jessriedel wrote: post #3

Is this worth reading? I stopped after the ridiculous claim that "If you can pay peanuts, you can produce tanks and ICBMs that cost peanuts." I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Likewise, the US had objectively more economic power than the USSR, and, assuming that the USSR had to…

He's pretty unclear on economics, yes. Capitalism more efficiently allocates the labor of people than a command/communist economy. Thus, for the same population, a capitalist economy has more wealth -- it can spend this on better consumer goods AND better military hardware. The tokens themselves don't matter. As well, the "western world" was much bigger and better resourced than the soviet bloc, and started from a mu…

It doesn't seem right to state "He's pretty unclear on economics, yes." and then go on to make an unqualified statement of amazement that soviets were able to maintain some level of parity as long as they did.

Like it or not Russia defeated the bulwark of the German war machine, there is no question they suffered the brunt of the German military force that would have easily overwhelmed other allied nations, even possibly the US. Russia did so using that inefficient system to allocate resources.

They did not do this by simply chucking their soldiers at the Germans with the threat of being shot by a Peoples Party Officer if they tried to run back, and often repeated myth of why Russia was able to halt and then pursue the Germans back to Berlin.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#58

Post by jerf »

gnosis wrote: post #55
astine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that, in the united States at least, it doesn't work that way. Public works are significantly less efficient than private works. It is very common in the US for a public entity to spend many times as much on a work as a private company. The incentive systems in the private sector are just that much much better. This is in fact one of the arguments for a capitalist society. If a command economy were capable of…

You might not know (or forget) Stalin's various purges of some of the most brilliant and effective people the USSR (along with millions of others), not to mention the tens of millions of Soviet citizens who died when their country was ravaged during WW2. There was also the fear and terror the country was ruled by, resulting in a state of constant paranoia among the citizenry. Not to mention the cronyism inherent in t…

You just explained part of why a centralized system is less efficient, though even if you remove all those problems a centralized system still can not beat a capitalistic system with its superior capital allocation via pricing mechanisms. But those things are an intrinsic part of having a fully centralized system. Somebody not in the favored central government is going to want to be in the favored central government clique, and in the absence of other mechanisms to keep them in check (like letting the market decide who wins or even having both win), it's going to turn to violence. Proponents of centralized government can't ignore this aspect of their proposals and thereby forget they are talking about governing humans, and not abstract beings without ambition, happy to be drones.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#59

Post by gnosis »

jerf wrote: post #58
gnosis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not know (or forget) Stalin's various purges of some of the most brilliant and effective people the USSR (along with millions of others), not to mention the tens of millions of Soviet citizens who died when their country was ravaged during WW2. There was also the fear and terror the country was ruled by, resulting in a state of constant paranoia among the citizenry. Not to mention the cronyism inherent in t…

You just explained part of why a centralized system is less efficient, though even if you remove all those problems a centralized system still can not beat a capitalistic system with its superior capital allocation via pricing mechanisms. But those things are an intrinsic part of having a fully centralized system. Somebody not in the favored central government is going to want to be in the favored central government…

"You just explained part of why a centralized system is less efficient,"

Um.. No. I explained some of the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed. No other "centralized system" had the particular history that the Soviet Union had. It was absolutely unique. And I can see no reason why any other "centralized system" must have all, or even any, of those negative factors which caused the Soviet Union to collapse.

"even if you remove all those problems a centralized system still can not beat a capitalistic system with its superior capital allocation via pricing mechanisms"

This statement of yours sounds like an avowal of ideology (an ideology that's sadly all too prevalent on HN), rather than any sort of argument in favor of capitalism or against communism.

"Somebody not in the favored central government is going to want to be in the favored central government clique, and in the absence of other mechanisms to keep them in check (like letting the market decide who wins or even having both win), it's going to turn to violence."

Are you saying that "favored central government cliques" and violence aren't possible in capitalist systems? Even a superficial look at a model capitalist country like the US will reveal their presence.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#60

Post by borism »

jerf wrote: post #56
borism wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

building ICBMs has 0 correlation to wealth

Which is why Somalia is just full of the things. And they were invented circa 2,000 BC. You're so far off I despair of even imagining where to begin trying to correct you. You have to have a base level of wealth to even come close to building them.

Both North Korea and Iran are actively pursuing ICBM programs. What kind of "base wealth" do you imagine these countries have?
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