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Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

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Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#191

Post by WalterBright »

kylestlb wrote: post #180
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I know. Every failure of communism is because it wasn't really communist! I wonder where the tipping point of "true" communism is? Because the closer one gets to communism, the worse the results.

Free markets, on the other hand, work even if they aren't perfect. The more free they are, the better they work.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#192

Post by WalterBright »

kylestlb wrote: post #184
WalterBright wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no value without labor. True, but there is also no value without investment and risk. Marx's failure was ignoring the other two ingredients. Marxism is building a road with hundreds of laborers with shovels. Capitalism is one guy with a bulldozer. P.S. Cuba has no riches to steal.

Marx wrote a gigantic book called Capital and it provides a thorough analysis of investment and risk. He wrote a great deal of words describing how investment relates to surplus value (hint: investment is simply a capitalist's way of generating surplus value - profit, which is then used to generate more surplus value, which is... you understand the systemic contradiction here, I hope). You should probably read it if…

I enjoyed reading Toliken's fantasy LODR very much, but my attempts at reading Marx's fantasies felt like hammering a nail into my skull.

The attempts at implementing Marxism all ended in misery and famine. What more would anyone need to know about it?

BTW, a capitalist investing money also entails risk. How it works is the more risk, the more potential reward. Does Marx account for risk? I ask that because the Marxists I hear never mention the essential role risk plays, they usually just assume there is no risk.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#193

Post by Dalewyn »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #168
Dalewyn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put another way: Singers who aren't good enough to make it on their own form large idol groups (eg: AKB 48) to sell themselves, while those who are become stars on their own or form small bands with others of similar success. Or to put it another way: Ground meat is great, but the components thereof by themselves are generally regarded as waste.

This whole train of metaphors is just bizarre and wrong. Singers who aren't good enough to make it on their own are never heard of or discussed. Ground meat made from poor quality meat is poor quality ground meat, and people do, in fact, grind the good stuff to make good stuff. And I'm sure that plenty of people who could start a business on their own could start a business with the help and support of like-minded pa…

>Singers who aren't good enough to make it on their own are never heard of or discussed.

Correct. I've definitely heard of AKB 48 and other idol groups; I have never heard anything concerning any specific member of one other than randomly showing up on a cheap variety show long after they retired ("graduated") from showbiz.

>Ground meat made from poor quality meat is poor quality ground meat

But it's generally preferable to the poor quality component meats, which was what I tried to allude to.

>people who could start a business on their own could start a business with the help and support of like-minded partners,

People with the chops to become founders on their own can also become co-founders joining with other similar people.

People without the chops can't become founders without joining others to become co-founders.

Basically: All apples are fruits, but not all fruits are apples.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#194

Post by WalterBright »

harwoodjp wrote: post #179
WalterBright wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#195

Post by gaadd33 »

gradschoolfail wrote: post #165
api wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?

A comment below suggests that they have a hard time recruiting engineers, but I believe also experts and talent in general.. There’s then also something deeper about making the trade-off between growth(rate) and stability.. OTOH photographer coops are quite common, here is a famous one https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Magnum_Photos

Does the Basque region produce more engineers than other areas? I'm guessing their issue is more tied to the demographics of the area they are in and less of the compensation side of things. It's far harder to commit to a coop where your contribution is valued thousands of miles away and you don't have the immediate stake in things (e.g. your bar, bakery, barber, etc)

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#196

Post by kragen »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #160
kragen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are overestimating the degree to which your personal social group is typical in the world by probably about a factor of 100

I think you misunderstood. I said if someone has heard the term "anarcho-syndicalist", there is a very high chance it's from the Holy Grial. Not 99% of people in the world are familiar with the term.

you're still overestimating how much you know about the world, by a lot. in the spanish-speaking world, for example, anarcho-syndicalism is much better known than monty python (though, not among programmers, because they speak english and write python). and i'm guessing that monty python isn't that widely known among arabic speakers, russian speakers, and chinese speakers, while anarcho-syndicalism is a significant historical strain of socialism a significant number of them are acquainted with

making any statement about 99% of the people who have heard of anarcho-syndicalism represents a staggering degree of unconcern for veracity, given how hard it is to get a handle on that group

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#197

Post by gaadd33 »

trhway wrote: post #78
api wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?

They don’t allow genuine innovation in any shape or form, and that in particular leads to highjacking by bureaucrats and degradation. So they may work in short term (work for some at the price of oppressing the ones who don’t fit well into the collective) - I’m from USSR for example - yet the result is predetermined.

Mondragon has lasted 68 years and I believe the USSR had lasted 69 years. Why do you think they will fail in the next year? Also given the speed of advancement has increased in the past 30+ years, it seems like they have kept pace a lot better than the USSR (or it's successor Russia)

Or have you worked there and this is first hand?

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#198

Post by gradschoolfail »

gaadd33 wrote: post #195
gradschoolfail wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comment below suggests that they have a hard time recruiting engineers, but I believe also experts and talent in general.. There’s then also something deeper about making the trade-off between growth(rate) and stability.. OTOH photographer coops are quite common, here is a famous one https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Magnum_Photos

Does the Basque region produce more engineers than other areas? I'm guessing their issue is more tied to the demographics of the area they are in and less of the compensation side of things. It's far harder to commit to a coop where your contribution is valued thousands of miles away and you don't have the immediate stake in things (e.g. your bar, bakery, barber, etc)

You are probably right.

However, if your issues are tied to local characteristics, then (in maybe an abstract way) you still have another fundamental obstacle to scalability, not related to compensation..

(FWIW i think an interesting related question is whether YC might be able to scale outside SF if they werent so into the slogan “do things that dont scale” — which i sometimes interpret as the viridical paradox “scale by not scaling”)

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#199

Post by fragmede »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
fragmede wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Summarizing the past twenty-thirty years as "slightly more productive markets due to efficiency thanks to better information" might be oversimplifying things a bit, don't you think?
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