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Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

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Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#171

Post by nyokodo »

harwoodjp wrote: post #161
K0balt wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to op’s emotional well being, but he is spot on with his reasoning. In the rarified air that most of us here inhabit, it’s easy to forget that for every college professor there is someone for whom tying their shoes is a significant cognitive challenge. For every really smart person, there is someone who lacks the cognition to participate meaningfully in society. For every brilliant individual, there is…

Your view is called Social Darwinism and it’s really dangerous/dystopian. Also collapses under scrutiny.

> Your view is called Social Darwinism

The only thing either response to your original reply have done is provide uncontroversial and non-conspiratorial reasons why Mondragons are extremely rare. Calling that Social Darwinism is like calling you a Stalinist, a slander based entirely on a superficial similarity of your rhetoric.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#172

Post by [deleted] »

harwoodjp wrote: post #161
K0balt wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to op’s emotional well being, but he is spot on with his reasoning. In the rarified air that most of us here inhabit, it’s easy to forget that for every college professor there is someone for whom tying their shoes is a significant cognitive challenge. For every really smart person, there is someone who lacks the cognition to participate meaningfully in society. For every brilliant individual, there is…

Your view is called Social Darwinism and it’s really dangerous/dystopian. Also collapses under scrutiny.

[deleted]

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#173

Post by harwoodjp »

nyokodo wrote: post #171
harwoodjp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view is called Social Darwinism and it’s really dangerous/dystopian. Also collapses under scrutiny.

> Your view is called Social Darwinism The only thing either response to your original reply have done is provide uncontroversial and non-conspiratorial reasons why Mondragons are extremely rare. Calling that Social Darwinism is like calling you a Stalinist, a slander based entirely on a superficial similarity of your rhetoric.

You guys are both discussing intelligence hierarchies (wtf?) without regard to actual history of popular labor movements being violently squashed.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#174

Post by WalterBright »

fragmede wrote: post #167
WalterBright wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies go bankrupt all the time. > Our economic system is predicated on withholding basic needs for profit. An economic system based on "to each according to his need" has been tried many times. It fails to deliver.

> An economic system based on "to each according to his need" has been tried many times. Have there been any attempts since the rise of the smartphone and the Internet? I'm only aware of attempts that predate them and those two things have changed capitalistic societies dramatically, for better or worse.

I don't think they've changed the way free markets work. If anything, it makes them more productive because of the efficiency of having better information.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#175

Post by WalterBright »

harwoodjp wrote: post #142
WalterBright wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been over 20,000 communes set up in the US. They are not illegal. Pick one and join it. Or set your own up.

Socialism is seizing the workplace from the capitalist.

The problem with a system based on taking is that one runs out of things to take.

Better to have a system based on creating things.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#176

Post by RHSeeger »

greenie_beans wrote: post #110
RHSeeger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no value without labor. While this is generally true, it's also not the entire equation. For example, there's no gain without risk. - When I work for someone else, I am offloading some of the risk to that person/owner. When someone starts a company and hires other people... if the company goes belly up, the founder loses their investment; the workers find another job. - When I rent from someone else, I am…

there is a risk for the worker and renter, too. and opportunity costs. my shelter not being destroyed is extremely more important to me and my life than my landlord who has insurance for such things, especially in a place with a housing vacancy less than 1% (aka very very hard to find housing). if i leave, they will have no problem finding a tenant to take my place. any repairs and maintenance are essentially paid fo…

Other than the risk of being evicted from your rental, a homeowner has most of the risks of a tenant, plus more. And there are a fair number of protections for renters to lower that risk. There are some risks of the landlord being a bad player, which makes the renter's life worse.

The landlord has the risks that the renter doesn't (that a homeowner does); which is risk offloaded from the renter to the landlord. The landlord then has the risks of the tenant being a bad player, which can be extremely financially risky (worse than being fired from your job).

> from my POV, seems like a low risk investment to be a landlord

Your point of view is extremely far from the truth. Especially for landlords that have one or a few places they rent out, it can be extremely risky. Everything from tenants just deciding not to pay (and taking a year+ to evict) to a Pacific Heights situation, where the place is destroyed with no real recourse. Or, on the lower end, tenants just leaving the place in bad shape, with bugs/mice/whatever; that itself can cost tends of thousands of dollars to recover from.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#177

Post by K0balt »

harwoodjp wrote: post #173
nyokodo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your view is called Social Darwinism The only thing either response to your original reply have done is provide uncontroversial and non-conspiratorial reasons why Mondragons are extremely rare. Calling that Social Darwinism is like calling you a Stalinist, a slander based entirely on a superficial similarity of your rhetoric.

You guys are both discussing intelligence hierarchies (wtf?) without regard to actual history of popular labor movements being violently squashed.

I don’t think that asserting that intellectual capacity tends towards a bell curve distribution is an example of social Darwinism. I think that’s just called a testable hypothesis validated by a plethora of studies.

As for the idea that people that bother to think about things like their social responsibility to humanity are , by default, responsible for guiding humanity (because people that don’t think about such things will not take an active role in that effort , by definition) seems also uncontroversial.

In short, I have no idea what you’re on about.

That said, I’m with you on labor movements, and believe that unions and coops are generally extremely positive things most of the time.

I just don’t expect much from the average person anymore. Decades of observation has made me skeptical of the ability of the Everyman to act in his own best interests, on average.

It’s worth mentioning that it is apparent to me that this inability is fostered in no small part by people and entities that make it their business to subvert otherwise good faith actors that don’t exercise very much independent thought into pursuing goals and supporting policies that are explicitly or covertly not in their collective best interest. Gullible people are gullible, and they are exploited all up and down the political spectrum.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#178

Post by RHSeeger »

jmyeet wrote: post #47
RHSeeger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no value without labor. While this is generally true, it's also not the entire equation. For example, there's no gain without risk. - When I work for someone else, I am offloading some of the risk to that person/owner. When someone starts a company and hires other people... if the company goes belly up, the founder loses their investment; the workers find another job. - When I rent from someone else, I am…

> When I work for someone else, I am offloading some of the risk to that person/owner. Workers generally risk their lives or simply injury. Owners "risk" capital. I put that in quotes because our government is typically set up to rescue failing businesses and by that I mean bailing out the owners. If the business fails, the owner simply has less money or they have to become a worker. So who is really taking a risk he…

> If the business fails, the owner simply has less money or they have to become a worker.

The fact that you consider "losing everything you've saved up for your entire life, plus what you've borrowed, and destroyed your ability to borrow more" as "simply" is... mind boggling to me. I would rather work for someone else than risk losing everything by starting my own business (plus I prefer to develop software rather than run a business); that risk is _way_ beyond what I'm comfortable with.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#179

Post by harwoodjp »

WalterBright wrote: post #175
harwoodjp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism is seizing the workplace from the capitalist.

The problem with a system based on taking is that one runs out of things to take. Better to have a system based on creating things.

Well actually socialism has been historically concerned with maximizing human creativity. Fourier’s utopian vision was “libidinal” work that aligns passions with labor. Marcuse has a similar view in Eros and Civilization. Chomsky views creativity as axiomatic for humans, and syndicalism the appropriate system for harnessing it.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#180

Post by kylestlb »

WalterBright wrote: post #147
shafoshaf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. >>>Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. >>>There is no value without labor. The great thing Marx did…

> our current implementation of Capitalism is clearly wreaking havoc on our environment Communist countries are the most polluted ones.

"communist" countries are simply countries that are still operating within Global Capitalism that happen to be run by parties that are made up of communists. They would also freely admit that. There are no communist countries because communism isn't here yet.
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