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Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

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Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#31

Post by g42gregory »

malermeister wrote: post #22
g42gregory wrote: post #20

> I’ve heard that, under socialism, workers would vote on who they want to be managers... I grew up under socialism and wanted to mention that author "heard" very, very wrong. Under socialism, the Party bosses will decide who will be the managers. The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high plac…

This actually happened in Yugoslavia - keyword "worker self management". I'm not denying your experience, there were lots of terrible regimes calling themselves socialist, but it's wrong to generalize from that.

I am not familiar with the particulars of the Yugoslavia's "worker self management". But I can certainly say how Yugoslavia socialist experiment ended:

1. Brutal civil war with lots of people dead and country spitting apart.

2. All individual sub-countries going back to the capitalist system.

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#32

Post by 7sidedmarble »

g42gregory wrote: post #20

> I’ve heard that, under socialism, workers would vote on who they want to be managers... I grew up under socialism and wanted to mention that author "heard" very, very wrong. Under socialism, the Party bosses will decide who will be the managers. The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high plac…

I could just as easily say 'under capitalism, you are presented with the illusion of democratic choice at the ballot, but in reality the constituency of our elected officials is mainly the capital-owning class'

But that's not really engaging with the concepts of capitalism anymore. Sometimes that's perfectly fine. But it's a little lazy to fall back on instead of defending the merits of capitalism as an ideology.

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#33

Post by alexashka »

> In fact, I’m so impressed with how well The Profit scenarios illustrate the value of capitalism

Huh? It's competence he's impressed with. Capitalism ain't got a thing to do with it.

You can have incompetent buffoons hold power in capitalist systems, you can have incompetent buffoons hold power in socialist systems. Feel free to add other political systems, it's competence and alignment among members that matters, nothing else.

You know how you are impressed with a family that gets along and does good things for the community? It's not capitalism, it's competence and alignment.

Repeat after me, competence, alignment.

If people understand this much, politics will fix itself - you don't need to spend any time worrying about the boring details or fill your head with social 'science' (it is not science, it is bullshit).

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#34

Post by door103 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #10
malwarebytess wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Authoritarian “people’s republic of X”-style didn’t provide good outcomes. Except, you know, China.

China did well after adopting a capitalist economic model. Not so well after adopting a communist economic model. Over 50 million dying just from starvation is basically the worst you can possibly be. Insane top down command like killing all the sparrows or collectivizing farms, or pulling nails out of furniture so that little villages can make steel describes the insanity of that approach. It had a shelf life of abo…

> China did well after adopting a capitalist economic model. Not so well after adopting a communist economic model.

Let's be clear here -- regardless what you think of the Chinese government, they are far from a "capitalist economic model". Many major industries are nationalized, the state plays an enormous role in the economy. 60% of their economy by market cap is state-owned. It isn't Soviet-style or Mao-era socialism, but it is still a very different system than western capitalism. It's similar to the NEP era in the USSR (1921-1928)

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#35

Post by 0x4d464d48 »

g42gregory wrote: post #20

> I’ve heard that, under socialism, workers would vote on who they want to be managers... I grew up under socialism and wanted to mention that author "heard" very, very wrong. Under socialism, the Party bosses will decide who will be the managers. The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high plac…

"The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high places who vouched for them, favors that need to be returned, etc... Not that much different from the capitalism."

Bingo.

At a macro level ideology has little to nothing to do with policy decisions compared to protecting the power of those who are already empowered/priveleged.

... which is par for the course given human history really.

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#36

Post by g42gregory »

7sidedmarble wrote: post #32
g42gregory wrote: post #20

> I’ve heard that, under socialism, workers would vote on who they want to be managers... I grew up under socialism and wanted to mention that author "heard" very, very wrong. Under socialism, the Party bosses will decide who will be the managers. The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high plac…

I could just as easily say 'under capitalism, you are presented with the illusion of democratic choice at the ballot, but in reality the constituency of our elected officials is mainly the capital-owning class' But that's not really engaging with the concepts of capitalism anymore. Sometimes that's perfectly fine. But it's a little lazy to fall back on instead of defending the merits of capitalism as an ideology.

Yes, there is corruption in capitalist society, no question. And corruption can reach the point where it's no longer a free capitalist society.

But I think what people do not understand is the Socialism is a totalitarian society to begin with. You can't have one without the other.

All of our leaders were "democratically" elected. We have one choice at the ballot and you can vote Yes or No. You place your "secret" ballot (filled out in a closed booth!) into a separate "Yes" box or "No" box in full public view of election officials, who just signed you in and have pen and paper in their hands. Our leaders enjoyed an overwhelming public support as a result. This is Socialism.

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#37

Post by 7sidedmarble »

quantified wrote: post #2

Capitalism vs socialism isn’t about the existence of that capital, just who owns and how decisions are made. In all the cases of the mismanaged businesses, they were being mismanaged under capitalism and a new manager came in, was competent and was heeded. I guess the premise here is that “capitalism better because competent managers rarer than incompetent managers” and “incentives of money alone are better than ince…

Remember not a single of the Communist experiments of the 20th century started as already democratic, Western style societies.

Russia and China were not developed countries prior to communism. They didn't have what we would consider the rule of unarbitrary law.

Marx and Engels saw socialism as the next step a society would move into after capitalism. They predicted this had to rest on the foundation of a society which had already experienced it's 'bourgeois revolution', meaning power had to leave the aristocracy and be in the hands of the capital owning class.

They saw democracy as a necessary step for a society to progress to socialism. There is no great examples of this in the 20th century. If you read even a little Marx, how could you ever expect the kind of society he describes without first having democracy? Socialism is based on one concept: democracy in the work place. If democracy does not exist in the first place, the endeavor will always be doomed.

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#38

Post by quantified »

malwarebytess wrote: post #8
quantified wrote: post #2

Capitalism vs socialism isn’t about the existence of that capital, just who owns and how decisions are made. In all the cases of the mismanaged businesses, they were being mismanaged under capitalism and a new manager came in, was competent and was heeded. I guess the premise here is that “capitalism better because competent managers rarer than incompetent managers” and “incentives of money alone are better than ince…

> Authoritarian “people’s republic of X”-style didn’t provide good outcomes. Except, you know, China.

It’s too soon to tell.

Are you referring to Mao?

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#39

Post by quantified »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #16
quantified wrote: post #2

Capitalism vs socialism isn’t about the existence of that capital, just who owns and how decisions are made. In all the cases of the mismanaged businesses, they were being mismanaged under capitalism and a new manager came in, was competent and was heeded. I guess the premise here is that “capitalism better because competent managers rarer than incompetent managers” and “incentives of money alone are better than ince…

>Capitalism vs socialism isn’t about the existence of that capital, just who owns and how decisions are made. You can't just assume the existence of capital. It's not an exogenous variable.

Let’s change the value of that variable, or pick an equation that omits it. Do we still have either capitalism or socialism?

Re: Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

#40

Post by malermeister »

g42gregory wrote: post #31
malermeister wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually happened in Yugoslavia - keyword "worker self management". I'm not denying your experience, there were lots of terrible regimes calling themselves socialist, but it's wrong to generalize from that.

I am not familiar with the particulars of the Yugoslavia's "worker self management". But I can certainly say how Yugoslavia socialist experiment ended: 1. Brutal civil war with lots of people dead and country spitting apart. 2. All individual sub-countries going back to the capitalist system.

All of that was due to ethnic tensions tho, not relevant to this conversation.

All those countries have a lower standard of living now than they did before the breakup of Yugoslavia.

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