this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Thank you for that analysis.
Right, you didn't write that. You wrote that a coop could struggle when a competitor undercuts costs.
Right now, in this channel: Consequential Efficiency https://reddthat.com/post/3221538
Coops could reduce costs easier with a lower floor than regular companies if workers participate in a long-term reward.
I believe that most people don't want socialism. But the people who do could create a network of coops and share their resources however they like.
There are many markets where businesses can be bootstrapped without capital. Why not enter those markets and have the best margins by offering the best products? There is only a limited need to cut costs if a product doesn't compete on price.
A co-op has a certain harder floor on how much it will cut labor value costs, yep. A private corporation will cut labor costs to below basic needs, eventually. Workers will not do that to themselves, generally speaking, and will push back long before that. Regimes in which wages are maintained due to things like promising better in the future are generally predicated on imperialism, i.e. the worst tendencies have been temporarily foisted onto the imperiakized peoples of the world. But that is temporary: eventually it comes home. We see that happening now through neoliberalism. Wages don't keep up with inflation, social programs are cut, and a resurgent labor (and social) movement is combated with bureaucracy, police, and jail while poverty is criminalized. Left to its own devices, capitalism is constantly in crisis.
Most people have absolutely no idea what socialism is and are only familiar with flimsy capitalist propaganda against it. For example, the arguments you've made against competition are addressed in the basic foundational texts of socialism and have been known to be false for at least two centuries.
Capitalism constantly teaches the basic need for socialist responses. The only question is whether we can organize more effectively and faster than capitalism's solition: naked fascism. Liberals that adopt the pretense of opposing it adopt obviously milquetoast strategies that end up empowering fascists and murdering the left.
No such thing. Even pure knowledge workers require basic materials to support their work like computers and a space to work in. The exceptions are where the employer has offloaded even those costs, which is an effective wage reduction, not a change to how production requires capital.
The point I already raised addresses this. Your scenario is, "what if fixed costs were negligible?" The answer is that this leaves variable costs, i.e. labor, and capitalists will cut labor costs below what co-ops will bear, eventually. And again, if co-ops were more viable under capitalism this would already have happened.
Every product competes on price when it becomes a commodity, i.e. the vast, vast majority of things and services sold. At least, until monopoly takes over. Exceptions are just minor exceptions that eventually disappear due to commoditization.
most people have no idea what capitalism is, much less what socialism is.
Somehow you see all the reasons why coops are hard but you beleave sharing could easily resolve the conflicts about scarce resources.
Establishing successful coops would allow socialists to show that their values are rooted in reality, especially because it is difficult.
That's funny, I don't remember saying that.
I invite you to respond to the content of my critiques of co-ops
OK, I exaggerated. You wrote that beach houses could be shared or distributed in a lottery.
You have clear arguments why coops are not an option. My point is that you can transfer them onto socialism. In socialism, there is a higher floor on worker compensation because workers don't accept being exploited. But then how do workers deal with their country having less goods available?
If you can handle it as a country you can handle it as a coop.
I listed two examples in response to you suggesting that competition is the only option for scarce resource distribution, so... you're obviously wrong on that, which might be why you didn't reply at the time - and still haven't actually responded to the points made in-context.
I listed two examples that took five seconds to think of because they're how some actual human societies have distributed resources (and duties) historically. There are more ways, of course. Nice thing about having power is we would get to experiment with things like what to do with luxury properties.
They're an option in edge cases but they cannot be dominant under the capitalist system. I'm responding to the idea you've been suggesting - that just wanting to do more co-ops will address the fundamental oppressions of capitalism.
I'm not really sure what that means and am surprised there's any point here aside from "I don't like socialism, a thing I know almost nothing about".
It's always weird to get to the "parroting language" portion of a disagreement.
Socialism doesn't really have a single definition, as it's relative to the socialists that win the revolution and what they can implement while under constant violent threat by capital. It is always about expropriation of the means of production and attempting to run the economy in response to human need rather than the petty chaos of capital, but the way in which that happens is a matter of material context.
For example, some people wouldn't say you have socialism so long as there are differences in compensation, which would require a long path to arrive at - many steps with socialists in power and the bourgeoisie suppressed before the society would be deemed socialist. I don't think having that detailed of boundaries really matters - the important thing is that the bourgeoisie are suppressed and there is a winning struggle to depose capitalism entirely.
I have no idea where this scenario came from. It sounds like you have some false suppositions about capitalism and socialism and are assuming everyone else has them too.
You may find it more rewarding to read up on both topics. Our societies are full of propaganda and bullshit about both but it takes a lot of reading to recognize the patterns and tropes.
???
People value things. In capitalism, the ones who value them the most, and who are able to pay, get them.
If you disrupt this mechanism by allocating resources differently, you risk that resources are wasted. Of course you can use other allocations but is that a good idea?
Capitalism has many flaws, e. g. monopolies disrupt this mechanism, but it just has to be better than its competitors to survive.
You imagine taking over capitalism and allocating luxeries differently. I doubt that those luxeries will exist. If workers only want to work e.g. 8 hours per week, because socialism, the surplus will be gone.
If you can make those workers work more under socialism without a gun to their head, then you should be able to do so right now within the legal framework of a coop.
It should be easier because you only have to manage production processes without fighting a war.
Sidequestion: how does a member of the bourgeoisie without capital look like?
That's not limited to capitalism, lol.
What mechanism? You haven't described a mechanism.
Do you not think capitalism itself wastes vast amounts of resources? Have you seen a landfill? How about the humans, including children, that subsist on that waste? The absurdity of so many things that are produced?
You should really read more on this topic. You seem to be stuck in simplistic all-or-nothing thinking. The idea that waste could exist is not itself something anyone should be concerned about. There is no reason to think it won't always exist. The question is what are the material impacts.
Yes.
Still haven't described a mechanism. Maybe you're attempting to understand Baby's First Utility and Pricing argument? I assure you nothing you've said is new to me.
What has to be better than its competitors to survive? Define better.
This is because you don't understand the basic mechanisms of production nor economic systems nor history. Your doubts mean nothing because you have never investigated this topic.
While understanding the origins of surplus requires that you go read, I'll give two examples of how absurd this is that are easy to understand.
The first is that capitalism is extremely inefficient and destructive. Duplicating bureaucracy across businesses, overproduction problems, regular recessions, deliberately inflated unemployment, ripping people's lives apart for short term profit (if you don't care about people's lives, which you should, you can at least understand that destroying someone's ability to work for 40 years because of some 2-year minimum wage stint is bad), chaos in productive direction, blowing resources on fundamentally pointless exercises (the vast majority of marketing and insurance activities), the list goes on. But that's just inefficiencies. Capitalism also requires destruction. The Grapes of Wrath tells a visceral - and common - story of this at human scale (the destruction of stock to address a profitability crisis), but the greatest destruction is through war and financial domination between countries, i.e. imperialism. Capitalism creates crisis and incentives that resolve through the killing of millions by direct murder and by deprivation. Looking at only the British Raj is sufficient to understand this, but it is actually worldwide and constant.
The second is that capitalism has become dominated by finance and speculation, which are drags on production. Humans overpaying for goods and services because debt cost has been thrust upon them, and not merely personsl debt like a credit card, but the actual inflated cost of things likes housing, healthcare, insurance. And, more, because it is dominant, it controls policy, feeding human lives into its maw to shit out dollars.
We are in Fisher-Price pretend land, now. This is beginning to feel like talking to a child that thinks their pretend play is just as valid as your knowledge.
You're gonna have trouble understanding this topic if you can't get past that kind of behavior. It keeps you from seeking knowledge. A kind of self-coddling, producing a false sense of certainty and unearned smugness.
They're either not bourgeois or we need to split a hair to talk about control and ownership being a dual character of one thing: dominant power over the means of production. The bourgeoisie are slaves to the capitalist system as well, they adopt its psychology and carry out its dictates. They are just in the oppressor role and benefit accordingly.
Housing, healthcare, insurance - it is expensive because there is not enough competition - or socialism.
Mark Cuban's pharmacy changes the market. In the same way, somebody could organize resources and create broad competition for all housing and healthcare markets.
You are sure that I don't know enough. How do you know that your knowledge about economy is enough or whom to trust to run socialism?
More playing pretend at knowing even basic economics. "competition" is a little false god that you worship because you're afraid of learning something that challenges the rest of your religion. How sad.
Real estate and housing prices balloon wherever finance and speculation are allowed to operate on them. Feel free to go learn about this at your leisure, as it's pretty clear you are actively avoiding learning anything from me.
At what rate are healthcare costs, including insurance, increasing under your oligarch's new regime? What about the median cost of pharmaceuticals per person?
Yeah duh. It's not like these patterns of deflection are subtle and you're just repeating words lazily absorbed from your masters. The idea of applying thought to them is clearly not on the table.
An incoherent, non-grammatical question that actively ignores everything I've told you about socialism. Sounds about right.
In which housing market without limited supply do prices balloon?
Do you expect me to believe that competition doesn't work at all? We started this discussion with reduced wages due to increased competition among workers.
Do you want to introduce socialism to prevent competition entirely?
Imagine thinking I'm going to answer any of your questions while you've ignored all of mine and most of what I've said.
You're on your own now, lib. Let's see if you can be honest with yourself.
You have two rhetorical questions. You must know that competition ceases within an oligarchy and that my point was to argue for competition and not oligarchy.
Thanks for the exchange.