LWDT 8: Hitting the Marx

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Like Socialism?

Depends on the flavor of socialism, but it's worth noting that none of the flavors that are known for mass murder are particularly common.

No they're incredibly common, to the point they still rule entire nations unlike any flavor of fascism.

[Asherahan]

I need to shave but at the same time I really don't wanna...

Help Comrades.

[Kubra]

I need to shave but at the same time I really don't wanna...

Help Comrades.

then don't, either the excruciating itchiness will give you the incentive or you'll get over the hump and end up with a magnificent mustache

[Cekoviu]

I need to shave but at the same time I really don't wanna...

Help Comrades.

Why in God's name would you come to the LWDT for this? Keep that shit in TET.

[Nakena]

Do any of yall support accelerationism?

Very much so, but a little different than what you have in mind with it ^^

[Torrocca]

Okay, so, we have all this laid out, in addition to what I've brought up. And you've brought up valid points regarding overtime work and so on.

With that in mind, don't you see how much that reinforces my point about Socialism? Even CEOs (who, operating as employees of the directors and the business owner, presuming they themselves aren't the owner) end up unduly suffering under Capitalism. It would be inherently better to either have that work divided up among the entire business, assuming we're talking about Market Socialism, or to be made irrelevant, most preferably by a decentralized, bottom-up form of planned Socialism. If even the people commonly seen as the top-dogs of society are getting brutally fucked, then an egalitarian, democratic economic model is exactly what's needed to fix that, for everyone.

70% of them said owning a small business is the best job they’ve ever had. Ninety-four percent of small-business owners say they are at least somewhat successful, 87% say they are at least somewhat satisfied with being small-business owners, and 84% say they would still become small-business owners if they had to do it all over again.

In other words, business owners don't make victims of themselves. Despite their hardships they prefer the system that grants them Independence. Why rescue them from a hardship that they not only bring on themselves, but feel is worth the struggle?

So they work longer, but enjoy it?

Clearly the key to the equation here is missing, and that's the ownership of the means of production. Could it simply be they're happy with it, despite having longer hours and so on and so forth, because they own the means of production that their workers work on?

I'm sure many people would be just as happy as small business owners are with their privately-owned businesses if they democratically owned the means of production.

You make a fair point, but we could simply do away with that question by adopting some form of a democratic economic model. It'd mitigate the wholesale strain Capitalism creates - which exists for everyone, as you've shown with your sources - by a huge magnitude

What practical way can you fund your, as we all know, very hard to finance co-ops in a way that simply couldn't happen under capitalism? Remember, the EL requires an initial investment. Simply claiming that some sort of democratic economic model could ignore the question of initial investment is false.

Assuming Market Socialism? Simple: You (and whoever you were planning on starting a business with) would start by working in a business, not too differently from Capitalism, except now you and everyone else in that business would have shared, democratic ownership of the means of production, meaning you'd be making a lot more than under Capitalism, since you'd be receiving the full value of your labor in return for putting your labor in. Once you (and again, whoever you're partnering with to start a business) have the funds necessary, you'd buy what you need and start a business. Or, technically, you could start your own private business where you're the sole worker-owner, but there'd likely be labor laws in place in the society practicing this system that'd prevent you from having employees and thus creating the same pitfalls of Capitalism itself. Simple enough.

Assuming a decentralized, planned Socialist economy? Again, pretty simple, but a far cry from both Capitalism and at least some of Market Socialism (that's not to say there'd be no free markets existing under this form of Socialism, just that economic regulation would happen on the communal level, or just any relevant small-scale that's still considered societal in nature). If money still exists, and is how labor's valued, then it either wouldn't be too different from the Market Socialism example, assuming market competition rather than cooperation, or it would be the collective purchasing power of the portion of the society you live in - either through taxes paid to your local government or some other means - that would lead to the necessary MoP being brought in to establish whatever your local society needs at that given point in time. If money doesn't exist, then, with the means of production being socially owned, either you'd make the MoP yourself in cooperation with the rest of your local society, or a system of confederation, union, etc. would exist between multiple local populations to facilitate the trade and allocation of resources as necessary.

Assuming a centralized planned economy? Shit would require state sanctioning.

I understand Capitalism isn't against it, and I know you're definitely not, but worker cooperatives are only a bandage solution to a gaping wound; if the economy's still oriented in such a way that private ownership of the means of production is still the primary mode of economics, rather than worker or social ownership, then too many people are still being unduly screwed, even if worker cooperatives are rising in number.

That's very vague. For 100000 years, people lived on essentially $2 a day. Then 250 years ago the Industrial Revolution happened in incomes, life expectancy, calorie intake, all escalated to levels never before imagined. So the fact that you could imagine people being slightly better off if you were in charge of things isn't convincing enough to me.

I don't want to be in charge of anything, so this was a pretty pointless jab. Just because human living conditions improved under Capitalism (largely thanks to technological innovation that can't be completely explained as happening because of Capitalism) doesn't mean such conditions are no longer problematic for the overwhelming majority of humans. Things may be relatively materially better under Capitalism, but they're still excessively shitty because of the rampant socioeconomic inequality it imposes. These can all be improved, and the best way to do that is through mass action, through the will of the people themselves, through democracy and liberty in all aspects of life, not by upholding the status quo of a system that made some gains over Feudalism while simply replacing one ruling class with another.

Given the fact that Capitalism tends to produce way too much excess, as well (which, again, could be largely avoided with decentralized, bottom-up economic planning or even somewhat avoided through Market Socialism), we're seeing ecological collapse at a rate unseen before that requires drastic - not gradual - change to combat.

Capitalism is no longer antithetical to ecology. A Private Industry, perhaps with some subsidies I don't know, develop the Net Zero coal plant in Texas. They plan on building 300 more. If countries like India adopted this Net Zero technology, CO2 production predictions could be cut almost entirely. These net zero plants are just as expensive as the unfriendly plants they government-subsidized.

Working with the Risk Takers, innovators, and Property Owners is how you solve issues.

With the various amounts of deregulations the Trump administration has recently introduced throughout his tenure, he's pretty easily proven that Capitalism and ecological protection simply cannot mesh by any meaningful metric. It doesn't matter much if a single company, under a free market system, introduces environmentally-friendly policies if another, bigger company uses environmentally-unfriendly policies and cheaper prices to outcompete them into irrelevancy. Bad-faith actors are not going to simply go away under Capitalism so long as a profit's attainable; that same profit motive is a core fundamental of Capitalism, so it can't simply be handwaved away - you can't have Capitalism without it, so the only way to protect the environment from the profit motive's worst aspects is to do away with Capitalism. And when those bad-faith actors get into the political scene, the impact is dramatically worse.

[Asherahan]

I need to shave but at the same time I really don't wanna...

Help Comrades.

then don't, either the excruciating itchiness will give you the incentive or you'll get over the hump and end up with a magnificent mustache

Before I went to the army I had a beard that would make the Grey Beards of Skyrim Blush....

Also why is it that a lot communists have beards?

[Kubra]

then don't, either the excruciating itchiness will give you the incentive or you'll get over the hump and end up with a magnificent mustache

Before I went to the army I had a beard that would make the Grey Beards of Skyrim Blush....

Also why is it that a lot communists have beards?

Cuz a lot of folks had beards anways, it's simple coincidence

[Grand Proudhonia]

Do any of yall support accelerationism?

Very much so, but a little different than what you have in mind with it ^^

Explain

[Grand Proudhonia]

Do any of yall support accelerationism? I have been looking at it more here recently as an alternative to violent insurgency... possibly supported through the use of mass strikes

How do mass strikes contribute to accelerationism?

More so as a final stage of accelerationism, to push capitalism off of the cliff that it will be hiking towards over the next 15 years

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Do any of yall support accelerationism? I have been looking at it more here recently as an alternative to violent insurgency... possibly supported through the use of mass strikes

Is reformism a big joke to everyone?

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Do any of yall support accelerationism? I have been looking at it more here recently as an alternative to violent insurgency... possibly supported through the use of mass strikes

I support pretty much all forms of accelerationism. Bring on the Boogaloo at this point.

Even the mass murdery kinds?

[Pasong Tirad]

I need to shave but at the same time I really don't wanna...

Help Comrades.

Beards are praxis.

[Kowani]

Do any of yall support accelerationism? I have been looking at it more here recently as an alternative to violent insurgency... possibly supported through the use of mass strikes

Is reformism a big joke to everyone?

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

[VoVoDoCo]

So they work longer, but enjoy it?

Clearly the key to the equation here is missing, and that's the ownership of the means of production. Could it simply be they're happy with it, despite having longer hours and so on and so forth, because they own the means of production that their workers work on?

I'm sure many people would be just as happy as small business owners are with their privately-owned businesses if they democratically owned the means of production.

I'm not sure what you're saying. There's many reasons why they're happy with this arrangement. Research by Keap suggest that independence, passion, and success are equally present motivations. Business Insider (which I personally trust more) suggests that independence is closer to 90%.

Assuming Market Socialism? Simple: You (and whoever you were planning on starting a business with) would start by working in a business, not too differently from Capitalism, except now you and everyone else in that business would have shared, democratic ownership of the means of production, meaning you'd be making a lot more than under Capitalism, since you'd be receiving the full value of your labor in return for putting your labor in. Once you (and again, whoever you're partnering with to start a business) have the funds necessary, you'd buy what you need and start a business. Or, technically, you could start your own private business where you're the sole worker-owner, but there'd likely be labor laws in place in the society practicing this system that'd prevent you from having employees and thus creating the same pitfalls of Capitalism itself. Simple enough.

But that ignores the question of initial investment. I asked how you would get the funds to start the business without a risk taker/investor. You said, well the workers would just raise the funds since we keep more our wages. That's putting the cart before the horse. You plan on starting a chair making business with the extra money you make (without a investor risk taker visionary leach taking some of your paycheck) and use that to fund it. Remember, the business hasn't been made yet. No profits can be used. Where does the original investment come from? Also, creating co-ops by raising one's one money? That's not Anti-Capitalism. Or Capitalism. And it's CERTAINLY not revolutionary. Your sig lie

Assuming a decentralized, planned Socialist economy? Again, pretty simple, but a far cry from both Capitalism and at least some of Market Socialism (that's not to say there'd be no free markets existing under this form of Socialism, just that economic regulation would happen on the communal level, or just any relevant small-scale that's still considered societal in nature). If money still exists, and is how labor's valued, then it either wouldn't be too different from the Market Socialism example, assuming market competition rather than cooperation, or it would be the collective purchasing power of the portion of the society you live in - either through taxes paid to your local government or some other means - that would lead to the necessary MoP being brought in to establish whatever your local society needs at that given point in time.

Well, we won't worry about theoretical non-money states since your example brought up wages in both the capitalist and socialist examples you gave. So to save space, I deleted that part from the quote.

But the same problem arises. Without the initial investment, where do the funds for your chair business come from? I suppose you could be subsidized. I sure hope they don't choose to subsidize oil instead. Or use it's power to enrich it's party members. Or subsidize incompetency. Just making a pencil is bloody difficult. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made.

Just as with any other manufactured products, the economics of pencil manufacturing are driven by a number of factors.

These cost drivers include:

• cost of raw materials (wood, graphite, clay, brass or aluminum for ferrules, lacquer components, etc.)
• cost of parts or other finished components used to assemble the pencil
• cost of transportation and handling of various materials used and of the finished product to the factory
• cost of labor and benefits for the factory workers employees
• cost of energy
• cost of supplies used to maintain equipment
• cost of government regulations (taxes, duties, compliance to safety, labor or environmental rules)
• cost of capital (money used to buy equipment, to purchase and maintain inventories of raw materials, parts, supplies and finished product)
• cost of management

Pencil companies make a number of important decisions regarding these costs as part of their business. Some of the most important decisions include:

• the quality of product they wish to produce will impact which raw materials and component parts they will purchase
• alternative suppliers for raw materials
• whether to make internally or buy externally different component parts like slats, leads, ferrules and erasers or even semi-finished pencils from other pencil manufacturers
• where to locate their pencil factories which is driven by relative difference in costs between cities, states or countries for labor and materials, transportation costs for incoming materials as well as to the customer, regulatory and energy cost as well as duties and taxes
• the quantity of product to produce drives the level of investment required in the factory and inventories as well as can effect the cost per unit produced due to economies of scale.

All of that from a planned economy? In a socialist planned economy, prices would naturally be set to avoid exploitation. So price signals are just gone at worst, and at best warped beyond use.

I don't want to be in charge of anything, so this was a pretty pointless jab. Just because human living conditions improved under Capitalism (largely thanks to technological innovation that can't be completely explained as happening because of Capitalism) doesn't mean such conditions are no longer problematic for the overwhelming majority of humans. Things may be relatively materially better under Capitalism, but they're still excessively shitty because of the rampant socioeconomic inequality it imposes. These can all be improved, and the best way to do that is through mass action, through the will of the people themselves, through democracy and liberty in all aspects of life, not by upholding the status quo of a system that made some gains over Feudalism while simply replacing one ruling class with another.

If you were in charge of our economic future, you'd decentralize everything correct? I wasn't suggesting you were a mass planner. Nothing you said has even come close to suggesting you are. So what I was saying was to convince me that your idea of mass decentralization without respect for property rights could be better than the system that increased our standard of living substantially. I'm asking for evidence.

With the various amounts of deregulations the Trump administration has recently introduced throughout his tenure, he's pretty easily proven that Capitalism and ecological protection simply cannot mesh by any meaningful metric. It doesn't matter much if a single company, under a free market system, introduces environmentally-friendly policies if another, bigger company uses environmentally-unfriendly policies and cheaper prices to outcompete them into irrelevancy. Bad-faith actors are not going to simply go away under Capitalism so long as a profit's attainable; that same profit motive is a core fundamental of Capitalism, so it can't simply be handwaved away - you can't have Capitalism without it, so the only way to protect the environment from the profit motive's worst aspects is to do away with Capitalism. And when those bad-faith actors get into the political scene, the impact is dramatically worse.

Usually it's the left that says, "You can have regulation and a bigger government without being less capitalist." So it's weird that I have to break that down for a leftist. So for example, Europe, which has some of the world's strictest regulations in the world, also often ranks near the top for economic freedom, many ahead of or at least comparable to the evil US.

In fact, Capitalism is in no way related to the discussion on regulations. Capitalism a strictly an answer. to the question of who gets to own the means of production. It gives a firm stance on the issue of property rights, not the "right" amount of red tape. Give me a reputable and respected textbook definition that says otherwise.
I've provided a few for you:

Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism

[VoVoDoCo]

Is reformism a big joke to everyone?

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I replied to your video game innovation post.

[Washington Resistance Army]

I support pretty much all forms of accelerationism. Bring on the Boogaloo at this point.

Even the mass murdery kinds?

Most sorts who attempt it have very poorly thought out strategy and goals so no not really.

[Nakena]

Very much so, but a little different than what you have in mind with it ^^

Explain

Our current societies, political and economical systems, ideological approachs (of whom some are genuinely toxic) are increasingly unfit for the challanges of the future and the very likely to occur radical change of environmental circumstances on our planet.

The faster they are burned through, challanged, forced to evolve the better, because technological and environmental developments are not going to wait.

[Genivaria]

So they work longer, but enjoy it?

Clearly the key to the equation here is missing, and that's the ownership of the means of production. Could it simply be they're happy with it, despite having longer hours and so on and so forth, because they own the means of production that their workers work on?

I'm sure many people would be just as happy as small business owners are with their privately-owned businesses if they democratically owned the means of production.

I'm not sure what you're saying. There's many reasons why they're happy with this arrangement. Research by Keap suggest that independence, passion, and success are equally present motivations. Business Insider (which I personally trust more) suggests that independence is closer to 90%.

Assuming Market Socialism? Simple: You (and whoever you were planning on starting a business with) would start by working in a business, not too differently from Capitalism, except now you and everyone else in that business would have shared, democratic ownership of the means of production, meaning you'd be making a lot more than under Capitalism, since you'd be receiving the full value of your labor in return for putting your labor in. Once you (and again, whoever you're partnering with to start a business) have the funds necessary, you'd buy what you need and start a business. Or, technically, you could start your own private business where you're the sole worker-owner, but there'd likely be labor laws in place in the society practicing this system that'd prevent you from having employees and thus creating the same pitfalls of Capitalism itself. Simple enough.

But that ignores the question of initial investment. I asked how you would get the funds to start the business without a risk taker/investor. You said, well the workers would just raise the funds since we keep more our wages. That's putting the cart before the horse. You plan on starting a chair making business with the extra money you make (without a investor risk taker visionary leach taking some of your paycheck) and use that to fund it. Remember, the business hasn't been made yet. No profits can be used. Where does the original investment come from? Also, creating co-ops by raising one's one money? That's not Anti-Capitalism. Or Capitalism. And it's CERTAINLY not revolutionary. Your sig lie

Assuming a decentralized, planned Socialist economy? Again, pretty simple, but a far cry from both Capitalism and at least some of Market Socialism (that's not to say there'd be no free markets existing under this form of Socialism, just that economic regulation would happen on the communal level, or just any relevant small-scale that's still considered societal in nature). If money still exists, and is how labor's valued, then it either wouldn't be too different from the Market Socialism example, assuming market competition rather than cooperation, or it would be the collective purchasing power of the portion of the society you live in - either through taxes paid to your local government or some other means - that would lead to the necessary MoP being brought in to establish whatever your local society needs at that given point in time.

Well, we won't worry about theoretical non-money states since your example brought up wages in both the capitalist and socialist examples you gave. So to save space, I deleted that part from the quote.

But the same problem arises. Without the initial investment, where do the funds for your chair business come from? I suppose you could be subsidized. I sure hope they don't choose to subsidize oil instead. Or use it's power to enrich it's party members. Or subsidize incompetency. Just making a pencil is bloody difficult. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made.

Just as with any other manufactured products, the economics of pencil manufacturing are driven by a number of factors.

These cost drivers include:

• cost of raw materials (wood, graphite, clay, brass or aluminum for ferrules, lacquer components, etc.)
• cost of parts or other finished components used to assemble the pencil
• cost of transportation and handling of various materials used and of the finished product to the factory
• cost of labor and benefits for the factory workers employees
• cost of energy
• cost of supplies used to maintain equipment
• cost of government regulations (taxes, duties, compliance to safety, labor or environmental rules)
• cost of capital (money used to buy equipment, to purchase and maintain inventories of raw materials, parts, supplies and finished product)
• cost of management

Pencil companies make a number of important decisions regarding these costs as part of their business. Some of the most important decisions include:

• the quality of product they wish to produce will impact which raw materials and component parts they will purchase
• alternative suppliers for raw materials
• whether to make internally or buy externally different component parts like slats, leads, ferrules and erasers or even semi-finished pencils from other pencil manufacturers
• where to locate their pencil factories which is driven by relative difference in costs between cities, states or countries for labor and materials, transportation costs for incoming materials as well as to the customer, regulatory and energy cost as well as duties and taxes
• the quantity of product to produce drives the level of investment required in the factory and inventories as well as can effect the cost per unit produced due to economies of scale.

All of that from a planned economy? In a socialist planned economy, prices would naturally be set to avoid exploitation. So price signals are just gone at worst, and at best warped beyond use.

I don't want to be in charge of anything, so this was a pretty pointless jab. Just because human living conditions improved under Capitalism (largely thanks to technological innovation that can't be completely explained as happening because of Capitalism) doesn't mean such conditions are no longer problematic for the overwhelming majority of humans. Things may be relatively materially better under Capitalism, but they're still excessively shitty because of the rampant socioeconomic inequality it imposes. These can all be improved, and the best way to do that is through mass action, through the will of the people themselves, through democracy and liberty in all aspects of life, not by upholding the status quo of a system that made some gains over Feudalism while simply replacing one ruling class with another.

If you were in charge of our economic future, you'd decentralize everything correct? I wasn't suggesting you were a mass planner. Nothing you said has even come close to suggesting you are. So what I was saying was to convince me that your idea of mass decentralization without respect for property rights could be better than the system that increased our standard of living substantially. I'm asking for evidence.

With the various amounts of deregulations the Trump administration has recently introduced throughout his tenure, he's pretty easily proven that Capitalism and ecological protection simply cannot mesh by any meaningful metric. It doesn't matter much if a single company, under a free market system, introduces environmentally-friendly policies if another, bigger company uses environmentally-unfriendly policies and cheaper prices to outcompete them into irrelevancy. Bad-faith actors are not going to simply go away under Capitalism so long as a profit's attainable; that same profit motive is a core fundamental of Capitalism, so it can't simply be handwaved away - you can't have Capitalism without it, so the only way to protect the environment from the profit motive's worst aspects is to do away with Capitalism. And when those bad-faith actors get into the political scene, the impact is dramatically worse.

Usually it's the left that says, "You can have regulation and a bigger government without being less capitalist." So it's weird that I have to break that down for a leftist. So for example, Europe, which has some of the world's strictest regulations in the world, also often ranks near the top for economic freedom, many ahead of or at least comparable to the evil US.

In fact, Capitalism is in no way related to the discussion on regulations. Capitalism a strictly an answer. to the question of who gets to own the means of production. It gives a firm stance on the issue of property rights, not the "right" amount of red tape. Give me a reputable and respected textbook definition that says otherwise.
I've provided a few for you:

Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism

Torrocca is among the 'revolution' school of thought rather than the 'reform' school of thought to put it very simply.
I believe that there are things among capitalism worth preserving, Torrocca does not.

[Cekoviu]

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I replied to your video game innovation post.

Are you implying that vidya isn't the most important issue of the 21st century? Boy, will the GG crowd be pissed to find that out.

[VoVoDoCo]

Torrocca is among the 'revolution' school of though rather than the 'reform' school of though to put it very simply.
I believe that there are things among capitalism worth preserving, Torrocca does not.

And that's fine. I'm sure you and I could find common ground on a lot of topics. But this revolution bullshit always pisses me off.

[Nakena]

Torrocca is among the 'revolution' school of though rather than the 'reform' school of though to put it very simply.
I believe that there are things among capitalism worth preserving, Torrocca does not.

And that's fine. I'm sure you and I could find common ground on a lot of topics. But this revolution bullshit always pisses me off.

I believe the entire train of marxist influenced thought, the patterns, the belief-system and the worldview as a whole is inherently toxic and should be set ablaze and destroyed. We can attach libertarism to that right away btw and burn it alongside.

[Torrocca]

So they work longer, but enjoy it?

Clearly the key to the equation here is missing, and that's the ownership of the means of production. Could it simply be they're happy with it, despite having longer hours and so on and so forth, because they own the means of production that their workers work on?

I'm sure many people would be just as happy as small business owners are with their privately-owned businesses if they democratically owned the means of production.

I'm not sure what you're saying. There's many reasons why they're happy with this arrangement. Research by Keap suggest that independence, passion, and success are equally present motivations. Business Insider (which I personally trust more) suggests that independence is closer to 90%.

That's essentially the point I was making. They have independent, private ownership of the MoP, so of course they'd be happier.

Assuming Market Socialism? Simple: You (and whoever you were planning on starting a business with) would start by working in a business, not too differently from Capitalism, except now you and everyone else in that business would have shared, democratic ownership of the means of production, meaning you'd be making a lot more than under Capitalism, since you'd be receiving the full value of your labor in return for putting your labor in. Once you (and again, whoever you're partnering with to start a business) have the funds necessary, you'd buy what you need and start a business. Or, technically, you could start your own private business where you're the sole worker-owner, but there'd likely be labor laws in place in the society practicing this system that'd prevent you from having employees and thus creating the same pitfalls of Capitalism itself. Simple enough.

But that ignores the question of initial investment. I asked how you would get the funds to start the business without a risk taker/investor. You said, well the workers would just raise the funds since we keep more our wages. That's putting the cart before the horse. You plan on starting a chair making business with the extra money you make (without a investor risk taker visionary leach taking some of your paycheck) and use that to fund it. Remember, the business hasn't been made yet. No profits can be used. Where does the original investment come from? Also, creating co-ops by raising one's one money? That's not Anti-Capitalism. Or Capitalism. And it's CERTAINLY not revolutionary. Your sig lie

The initial investment either comes from the people themselves or from the government they've established, assuming they actually need a monetary investment - something that'd only potentially be necessary under a moneyed Socialist system. Communist economies, like that of the Free Territory, were able to establish agrarian and industrial communes without making monetary investments or payments. They simply began to do whatever work their own communes and any neighboring communes needed to be done, and in the case of large-scale operations, such as handling railroad networks, they established communal confederacies to streamline any cross-communal organization.

It's not like people can't establish or do things without money, after all.

Assuming a decentralized, planned Socialist economy? Again, pretty simple, but a far cry from both Capitalism and at least some of Market Socialism (that's not to say there'd be no free markets existing under this form of Socialism, just that economic regulation would happen on the communal level, or just any relevant small-scale that's still considered societal in nature). If money still exists, and is how labor's valued, then it either wouldn't be too different from the Market Socialism example, assuming market competition rather than cooperation, or it would be the collective purchasing power of the portion of the society you live in - either through taxes paid to your local government or some other means - that would lead to the necessary MoP being brought in to establish whatever your local society needs at that given point in time.

Well, we won't worry about theoretical non-money states since your example brought up wages in both the capitalist and socialist examples you gave. So to save space, I deleted that part from the quote.

But the same problem arises. Without the initial investment, where do the funds for your chair business come from? I suppose you could be subsidized. I sure hope they don't choose to subsidize oil instead. Or use it's power to enrich it's party members. Or subsidize incompetency. Just making a pencil is bloody difficult. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made.

Just as with any other manufactured products, the economics of pencil manufacturing are driven by a number of factors.

These cost drivers include:

• cost of raw materials (wood, graphite, clay, brass or aluminum for ferrules, lacquer components, etc.)
• cost of parts or other finished components used to assemble the pencil
• cost of transportation and handling of various materials used and of the finished product to the factory
• cost of labor and benefits for the factory workers employees
• cost of energy
• cost of supplies used to maintain equipment
• cost of government regulations (taxes, duties, compliance to safety, labor or environmental rules)
• cost of capital (money used to buy equipment, to purchase and maintain inventories of raw materials, parts, supplies and finished product)
• cost of management

Pencil companies make a number of important decisions regarding these costs as part of their business. Some of the most important decisions include:

• the quality of product they wish to produce will impact which raw materials and component parts they will purchase
• alternative suppliers for raw materials
• whether to make internally or buy externally different component parts like slats, leads, ferrules and erasers or even semi-finished pencils from other pencil manufacturers
• where to locate their pencil factories which is driven by relative difference in costs between cities, states or countries for labor and materials, transportation costs for incoming materials as well as to the customer, regulatory and energy cost as well as duties and taxes
• the quantity of product to produce drives the level of investment required in the factory and inventories as well as can effect the cost per unit produced due to economies of scale.

All of that from a planned economy? In a socialist planned economy, prices would naturally be set to avoid exploitation. So price signals are just gone at worst, and at best warped beyond use.

See above. I'm not a Market Socialist anyway, so I'm not the best to question about Market Socialist ideas of prices or whatever.

I don't want to be in charge of anything, so this was a pretty pointless jab. Just because human living conditions improved under Capitalism (largely thanks to technological innovation that can't be completely explained as happening because of Capitalism) doesn't mean such conditions are no longer problematic for the overwhelming majority of humans. Things may be relatively materially better under Capitalism, but they're still excessively shitty because of the rampant socioeconomic inequality it imposes. These can all be improved, and the best way to do that is through mass action, through the will of the people themselves, through democracy and liberty in all aspects of life, not by upholding the status quo of a system that made some gains over Feudalism while simply replacing one ruling class with another.

If you were in charge of our economic future, you'd decentralize everything correct? I wasn't suggesting you were a mass planner. Nothing you said has even come close to suggesting you are.

I wouldn't decentralize everything. A mass movement of people - theoretically believing in the same or similar sort of Anarchist tendencies as I do - would.

Though, yes, theoretically, if I somehow happened to end up being the Queen Goddess of Humanity, I'd decentralize everything, abolish Capitalism and the state, and turn society into a free, egalitarian, democratic one.

So what I was saying was to convince me that your idea of mass decentralization without respect for property rights could be better than the system that increased our standard of living substantially. I'm asking for evidence.

The proof's found easily enough in worker cooperatives, and those are the most free-market-form of Socialist models. Imagine that, but applied beyond the idea of competitive, profit-driven markets (keep in mind that under all normal definitions of Capitalism, using the MoP for profits is necessary for Capitalism to actually be Capitalism) into a society that values cooperative markets, or non-market cooperation instead.

With the various amounts of deregulations the Trump administration has recently introduced throughout his tenure, he's pretty easily proven that Capitalism and ecological protection simply cannot mesh by any meaningful metric. It doesn't matter much if a single company, under a free market system, introduces environmentally-friendly policies if another, bigger company uses environmentally-unfriendly policies and cheaper prices to outcompete them into irrelevancy. Bad-faith actors are not going to simply go away under Capitalism so long as a profit's attainable; that same profit motive is a core fundamental of Capitalism, so it can't simply be handwaved away - you can't have Capitalism without it, so the only way to protect the environment from the profit motive's worst aspects is to do away with Capitalism. And when those bad-faith actors get into the political scene, the impact is dramatically worse.

Usually it's the left that says, "You can have regulation and a bigger government without being less capitalist." So it's weird that I have to break that down for a leftist. So for example, Europe, which has some of the world's strictest regulations in the world, also often ranks near the top for economic freedom, many ahead of or at least comparable to the evil US.

In fact, Capitalism is in no way related to the discussion on regulations. Capitalism a strictly an answer. to the question of who gets to own the means of production. It gives a firm stance on the issue of property rights, not the "right" amount of red tape. Give me a reputable and respected textbook definition that says otherwise.
I've provided a few for you:

Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism

I bring up the point of regulations and whatnot because it's intrinsically tied to the second half of the definition of Capitalism: namely, the usage of the privately-owned means of production in pursuit of profit, which implies but doesn't necessarily state or suggest "by any means necessary"; given the nature of how people have pursued profits throughout Capitalism's history, you can see how that quickly becomes a bad thing. You can't divorce Capitalism's two halves from each other, otherwise it's no longer Capitalism. The pursuit of profits is as inherent to Capitalism (as your own linked definitions acknowledge) as the private ownership of the MoP is, which means that the profit motive (and thus it's dark negatives, all the way to their darkest) is ever-pervasive no matter how well-regulated or not Capitalism ultimately is, which ultimately means bad-faith pursuers of profit will continue to act in bad faith to the very best of their ability, which is currently being exemplified with exclamation marks under government administrations like Trump's administration.

[VoVoDoCo]

I replied to your video game innovation post.

Are you implying that vidya isn't the most important issue of the 21st century? Boy, will the GG crowd be pissed to find that out.

I'm essentially a boomer. You're gonna have to talk nice and slow to communicate you young rapscallion.

[Cekoviu]

Are you implying that vidya isn't the most important issue of the 21st century? Boy, will the GG crowd be pissed to find that out.

I'm essentially a boomer. You're gonna have to talk nice and slow to communicate you young rapscallion.

the fuck is a rapscallion