The main issue with communism is that it puts the entire control of the economy in a few people’s hands. Even more so than capitalism does.
When that happens, the central planning that those people do, even in the best case is orders of magnitude less efficient than capitalism can manage.
And in the usual case, ends up with them funneling much of the resources to their buddies and letting others starve (a la holodomor).
Anyhow, it’s an argument that is about 100 years out of date. The Scandinavians solved this problem half a century ago already. The best thing we can do is have capitalism control production and distribution of goods and services, and democratic government’s socialist policies drive the resources where they need to go and solve the many economic externalities endemic in any capitalistic system.
A better solution, as yet, has not been demonstrated. Anyone advocating “pure communism” or “pure capitalism” is a rube.
When that happens, the central planning that those people do, even in the best case is orders of magnitude less efficient than capitalism can manage.
There was one promising solution to that which was attempted back in the early 70’s: Combine Cybernetics with Socialism.
Unfortunately the CIA instituted a coup in Chile to install a dictator more favorable to multinational business interests before it could be implemented.
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I didn’t watch the whole video, but it sounds very similar to what The Venus Project has in mind.
My feeling about this is that it unfortunately suffers from many of the same problems as communism. In that there will be some group of people who control the computers that make all the decisions, and over time those people will tilt the playing field in their favor and the rest will suffer.
Open source could mitigate this to some degree, but there will still be an “intelligencia” owning the code and having massive incentives for abusing it.
Best just not to have a system where such incentives exist IMO
I’m familiar with the Venus Project, I don’t believe there is much overlap in their ideas.
In that there will be some group of people who control the computers that make all the decisions, and over time those people will tilt the playing field in their favor and the rest will suffer.
This is likely true with Communism, but could be almost entirely mitigated if done using Anarchist (like Peter Kropotkin style anarchism) principles. Instead of an all powerful state controlling the reins which would inevitably breed corruption, this concept of cybernetics could be applied in a federated way, where smaller communities could hook-up to this cybernetic collective, which would allow for greater cohesion and collaboration between directly democratic communities.
Agreed to this! Communism means that people can’t be the owners of a buisness or anything at all. Thoose mixed economies where government-based (communist) companies compete along with individual’s buisness should be enought to make the best of two worlds. But still should be implemented correctly and you might also want to consider governments making some limitation on other private companies anti-competatively though. If government behaves well within this mixed economy then it will be cool i guess
Yes, antitrust, consumer protection, health and welfare programs, and pollution taxes are starkly missing in many of todays capitalist countries, first and foremost being the USA.
Though I must admit I don’t understand what you mean by that people can’t own things in capitalist societies. I would say there’s maybe too much ownership in capitalism.
