Collectivism is Inherently Selfish

I’m curious how many collectivists are willing to actually admit this. Because it is the truth. All you need to validate this is to ask one question. Do collectivists focus more on sharing what they have or taking what belongs to others?

We’ve reached this extremely delusional and greedy point in western history where an increasing number of people now believe that private property is theft. Not because they, themselves, are eager to share their own things with anyone and everyone else who wants or needs them. But simply because other people have things that they want. And their attitude seems to be, “You have that. I want that. Therefore you are bad for depriving me of it.” It’s absurdly childish and petty.

True collectivism is based on giving, not taking. And when faced with this uncomfortable truth, most modern western collectivists will respond with a cliché like, “If I had enough to share, I would share everything. But other people have all the money.” What they don’t realize is that this is a total bull(*)(*)(*)(*) cop out. Because generosity is a character trait. It is not dependent upon what one has. A truly generous person will be just as generous with 5 dollars as he will with 5 million. Whereas a stingy miser will be just as penny pinching with 5 million as he is with 5. His belief that he would somehow change his behavior if he had more is naïve.

You know the classic quote about “be the change you want to see in the world?” Collectivists should try this out for themselves. Try focusing on giving all of your things to other people. Tell me how that goes. Tell me if it’s as easy as you expect it to be for other people, and tell me how rewarding it feels.

I’m willing to bet none of you are even willing to do this. Not a single one of you. Am I wrong? Prove it. The ball’s in your court.

 

I think you got it wrong in the first place . Collectivism is about creating enough wealth for everyone while all members of the collective contribute their labour.
It is not about sharing as it is about cooperation .
Socialism believes that we can together work our way up while capitalism needs some people on the top to pull the others , this creates some interesting implications like the need of a central government and capitalist controlled public institutions .
In a collectivist situation you sit infront of your monitor and you decide together with other members how to allocate your resources , who will work where to maximise output and fulfil the needs of the community.
Personal property is not banned and nobody will deny you to open and run your personal business if it is beneficial for the collective , private ownership of capital is banned which is a very different situation from what you describe. Some collectives can even use work vouchers instead of money to distribute goods.

 

With collectivism, I assume you mean everything except for neoliberalism and anarcho- capitalism.

The form of socialism I support (or would like to see deployed and tried out when that has not been done yet) is essentially an extension of democracy into some parts of the economical system. Having the management of companies be elected democratically by the employees instead of by shareholders is one example. Giving a democratically elected government the authority to create nature reserves or stop oil drilling and such on the demand of the people is another example. It's about benefiting everyone, not taking stuff.

People make mistakes, or could fall into bad company when they grow up. My grandfather was heavily addicted to alcohol, which affected my dad's childhood a lot. My grandmother died when my mum was 14. They managed to get by anyway, but many are less fortunate and less psychically strong. There's more people than jobs, and some are not going to manage to get one. People might suffer from depression, disease or other things preventing them from working. That doesn't mean that they have somehow lost their right to a life, food on the table and medical attention when they're sick. It's the people whining over the tax percentages it takes to provide these things who are selfish and childish, no one else. When one has had an easy life it's easy to boast about how each is responsible for his own success. I'm in one of the very top educations available in Sweden for my age, and that's very easy to see looking only at my classmates how they see people who fail in school (they're lazy, they're stupid, and so on). Please stop whining over taxes being immature, you are just money-horny and you know it.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how you can hold both of these beliefs. On one hand you put forward the (correct) idea that many ordinary people are intensely flawed and that they often make poor decision. On the other hand you support "spreading democracy" in the workplace so that these very same individuals who are intensely flawed and make bad decisions now have a say in the most important aspects of production: entrepreneurial decision making. Seeking to eradicate the division of labor in the most essential area of the market economy, planning and the allocation of productive resources, is the surest way to make all of society poorer. It's also destroyed in a historical setting (it has always been individuals who found new firms and defy conventional wisdom, spontaneous order amongst workers has rarely ever happened, and when it has it's always unionization which proves their conservatism).

This is not to say that all entrepreneurs and capitalists are brilliant, nor that every worker is stupid, merely that democracy is an awful system whenever one gets above a minimal level of organization and its inherent incentive failures prevail. While I sympathize with wanting to help everyone, this doesn't make you any less selfish for doing so. You want to replace the values of those who peacefully earned and produced within society with your own will of who should receive money. You claim that it's immoral for someone not to help the common man, while at the same time you feel that is necessary to force the common man who does have a job and who has made the right decisions to help the one who doesn't have a job and who has made the wrong ones.

Life is hard and it's not always fair. This is why we have to attempt to form ways of helping those who are down on their luck which are both efficient and effective. The government is not the right way to go about doing this.

 

Why do individualists focus on what the collective society that bears them wishes them to contribute back instead of considering that without the collective cooperative society that allowed them their freedom they would have nothing?

No, we have reached a delusional and greedy point in history where increasing numbers of people who have accumulated wealth only because they live in a collective cooperative society that gave them room to prosper believe that they did it all by themselves and so, owe nothing to the rest of society. Their attitude seems to be "I made my fortune all on my own and I have the right to keep it all."

True collectivism is based on sharing, which is different from giving. Collectivism fails and societies collapse when the sharing becomes so fraught that it must be demanded, when sharing becomes giving.

I have already given away everything I owned except what I could carry on my back twice and all but what could fit in my car once. It is the most liberating thing to just walk away without a destination. I never did it with a big wad of cash in my pocket either, at most a few hundred dollars. I have accumulated a lot of stuff lately and am thinking of giving it all away.

You should give it a try. It might give you some insight into the difference between giving and sharing and open your eyes to the vast cooperative collective we live in because without that there would be no place for individualists, or their ability to accumulate fortunes.

At a personal level I would never force another to share what they have unwillingly. At a societal level this is unfortunately unavoidable since there are so many who seem to be pathologically incapable of sharing some of what they have taken from the world so others do not have to suffer. Obsession with inanimate objects is a sign of serious mental imbalances, the more abstract the object of obsession the greater the illness. It distresses me that so many have allowed their obsession with money to so completely consume them that they have abandoned compassion and empathy and turned the concept of sharing into giving, as in a gift, which should be freely given with acknowledgement and reciprocation but when it is not triggers moral outrage.

Well, if there is any moral outrage to be triggered it is against those who have plenty to share but do not and then have the audacity to claim moral outrage when they are forced to by a society that has supported them and given them their free rein, a society which has finally had enough of their petulant psychopathic selfishness.

 

I'm not saying that democratic companies would work out for sure, but the could potentially, and it would be a shame to not at least experiment with it. The allocation of the produced wealth in such a company would be much fairer, the management would no longer be able to take more money than they are actually worth to the company and wages would rise (of course not at the expense of others getting less than they are worth, then these people would most likely hire their services to another company, and a brain-drain is in no-ones interest, so people would in other words get what they are worth). Higher wages means more demand in the economy which means economical growth and higher employment- rates. The working conditions at the workplace would improve, and so on. Nepotism would decrease. I could also imagine that the motivation of the workforce would improve and that companies would be less prone to using slave- labour in the third world and doing things that are dangerous to the environment in different ways.
The problems do mainly arise when it comes to firing people, which these kind of companies would, I imagine, be less prone to do, even when that would be better for the economic development (as in deploying machinery to replace humans and lower prices). There could possibly become a custom to offer the fired people a parachute in the form money, training for another job or maybe the companies would make deals with each other to get the fired people re- employed (that could of course make things worse for long- term unemployed people). I don't think it would be a problem when it's a question of the survival of the company though. I don't want to dismiss the idea before it's been tried out properly because of that reason.
I don't think that people are necessarily too uninformed to run a company. People can run a country, after all. I think it's safe to assume that Apple would have started producing iPhones even if it was worker- run. They do have the money to take risks. They could still elect a manager who knows what he or she is doing and they trust without necessarily knowing all the details themselves (like democracy works). A guy with an idea could still get a patent and sell to whoever pays the most if he or she do not have the capital or perhaps time to realize it.


When it comes to redistribution politics in a social democratic fashion, I support it because it has been found to work. The average life spans are improved by universal health care, there's a reason that Americans die three years earlier than Swedes (ok, two; the health care and the food). You can also avoid a lot of bureaucracy with government healthcare (no need for lawsuits, commercials, squabbling over insurances and so on) and the burden of profit interest. This results in us in Sweden spending less than half of what Americans spend on healthcare per capita (http://newshour.s3.amazonaws.com/ph...h_than_what_might_be_expected_1_slideshow.jpg and http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jun/30/healthcare-spending-world-country). The administration of the healthcare is very decentralized and is being administrated by Landstinget, a small government or authority of sorts being elected separately for each region. Our health care system is great.
Equal rights to education, with a full 100% school voucher system, increases social mobility and makes your success more dependent on yourself and less on your parents income and social situation. It doesn't make the education worse in any way, shape or form, either, Sweden is at about the same level as the US on PISA. Improvements to the education should rather be made by changing the guidelines rather than the payment system.
Social democracy decreases poverty, and in doing so also decreases social problems, crime rates, social stress, etc. People can take risks, because they know they wont lose all they have if they fail. People don't get stuck in poverty in the same way, and I could imagine that that's a contributing reason that the Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45jgim/3-sweden/).

I don't think this could be done without government interference and taxes, but I'm open to suggestions, and if you have a suggestion for another system giving similar results I'm listening.

 

What stops that experimentation? There is no law that prevent it.

Is there some secret capitalist plot that stops worker owned companies?

Or, is it they can't compete in the market place?

 

I have lived in California since the mid 60's. We did a lot of sharing and caring during the age of Aquarius. It soon became clear there were people that we willing to share what little they had, and those that were quite content to live off those caring people.

Welfare was easy to get for people fully capable of taking care of themselves. They just found it easier to play the system than to support them selves.

How does the government differentiate between those that are truly needy, and those that would rather you pay their way?

What incentive does government have to make that differentiation?

 

Not anything, necessarily. It's not like everything that can be done has been done. There has to be energy, ambition, time and money. Why wouldn't such companies be able to compete?

 

There are several causes I can think of - the "efficiency" of an elected body like government for one, plus, politicians don't get elected by telling people they have to work harder.

The market is so competitive that even "capitalistic" companies fail by the thousands. The wrong decision(s) on products, pricing, advertising, hiring too few (and you get behind), or too many (no longer profitable), a better solution (the internet killed off encyclopedias), and the company fails. Established firms like JC Penny and Dell are faltering.

My point is the only reason many such companies don't exist is because they aren't competitive (there are always a few).

 

These are sort of just scattered thoughts. Only my first two points directly deal with the matter of syndicates, the other two are just flaws in your logic that I'm seeing.

1. It's fair that you think that an switch over to a democratic work space might work, my argument is merely that there's absolutely no reason to think that it would work. Furthermore what would "trying it" look like? There's nothing at all stopping workers from attempting to form a democratic firm, but they've never been inclined to (to my knowledge), and furthermore even if we assume that these syndicates are effective at planning and allocating the means of production, there are still a number of incredibly perverse incentives that result from this system.

2. If democratic control of the means of production is a more effective method (universally) of running a market organization there is no need for higher management as such. They just become other workers with probably a slightly higher salary since now they just have to make sure that goods go where they've been voted to go, not decide where the goods should go at all.

3. An increase in demand as a whole is negative for the economy in the long run. One of the best things that any individual can do to help his fellow men within the capitalist society is to save his money (under most economic conditions), the best being to invest it.

4. I'd rather see industries pop up in third world countries than increased wages in the developed world. I care more about decreasing the number of people who are living on five dollars a day than I do about helping the people making 45K+ a year. This is also a much better way of dealing with any possible population crises that might break out; increase the standard of living now. It's almost universally true that areas with higher incomes have fewer children. Just look at fertility rates in Africa and the Middle East vs. what we find in Europe.

A country is an awful comparison. There's a reason for Winston Churchill's famous quote on democracy is so popular. Democracy in government is fraught with problems, and at best it has only ever performed in a mediocre way. The reason why democracy is preferable to, say, a monarchy, is that there is no recourse in a monarchic system. There's only one way to effectively influence a monarchic regime; violent rebellion. A system of peaceful elections will always be superior to this system. Meanwhile a company is an entirely voluntary that individuals can secede from at any time, and there are inherent checks and balances on the effectiveness of capitalists (competition and the profit motive). Nevertheless, individuals have always been manipulated and deceived by their "political figures" exactly because people are uninformed and foolish. You spent all of your last post talking about how flawed individuals are, so why would these individuals be so good at electing anyone?

Masses have never had the vision of select few special men. The Wright brothers were called insane, the effect of Watt's steam engine would have been nearly inconceivable, and few thought that people like Henry Ford's methods would form one of the largest companies in history. Hell, I sure thought that Ipads would be a waste of space. The masses are always and have always been conservative and relatively cautious. In the end there's absolutely no reason why the masses of workers would be good at managing companies. It's not their job. Workers are where they are because they are good at doing a job, not because they are good at managing a company. We have people who design factories, they're called engineers, we have people who make cars, they're called factory workers, we have people who teach students information, they're called teachers. We don't have history teachers trying to design factories and we don't have factory workers trying to teach our kids history. We have specialization and individuals doing what they are best at. Democracy in the work place is an affront to this system that allows us to live as we currently do, since you're saying that we shouldn't have the great planners attempting to plan for the future, instead we should have untrained individuals who are part of the company because they're good at a job that specifically isn't planning.

I think you partially realize in this post that you're trying to compare apples and oranges. For a country with as many separating factors from Sweden; more violence, much higher obesity rates, and more poor, I don't think that three years differences with these things in mind can really be considered a great achievement.

We agree on the United States' healthcare system. It's an awful system, and the only solution is a full free-market healthcare system. You claim that history shows that a welfare state's intervention within the healthcare industry has provided wonderful results, yet if you want to see a massive amount of welfare statism in the system then look at the United States. Almost ever perversion of the structure has been implemented from decreasing supply to decreasing demand. The market is usually efficient at providing goods and services at a decent price, yet in the area we have seen the greatest interference is in the United States, and the further down the interventionist rabbit hole we travel the worst it gets, away from having what was probably the greatest healthcare system on earth in the mid 1900's. A socialized healthcare system would almost certainly be preferable to the current system which combines the worst of capitalism with the worst of government. With this said the socialized healthcare system is fraught with flaws as well, the sheer period that it takes for one to receive care in those countries and the level of care people receive when they do get treatment is indicative of this.

In America I'd Let markets work:

Stop subsidizing health insurance (tax exemptions on health-insurance) (less bureaucracy and infinite ability to pay by individuals. Demand down, price down, wages up), stop restricting the supply of doctors (AMA requirements) (supply up, price up), stop dictating what medical professionals can do what (federal and state regulations) (supply up price down), stop prohibiting the sale of health insurance over state lines and dictating what bureaucracies have to include in their coverage (a large number of state regulations)(less bureaucracy, costs down, supply up, prices down), allow non-profit organizations to voluntarily pool their funds to cover costs (federal regulations)(demand up, supply up), stop subsidizing healthcare on a massive scale (medicare and medicaid) (demand down), disband the FDA (massive decrease in drug costs) (supply rightward), and stop restricting the number of hospitals (federal regulation)(supply rightward). This is how we take supply and demand seriously to actually envision how we would make people's lives better.

These are my suggestions for the United States, my suggestion for your country and any other nation with socialized medicine would be much simpler: disband your system, allow the free market to allocate healthcare.

 

You could try it by beginning with applying the system to some schools, hospitals, maybe the police, and other services closely connected to the government, and then you go full on where it works. Say that democratic schools where the teachers and so on elect the headmaster are found to work nicely, but a democratic police force is found to be slow and inefficient, you democratize all schools but keep the police as it is. Then you try to figure out what made things go wrong with the police and improve the system.

You don't have to have a direct democracy. The employees elect a management of people they trust every year or couple of years and let them take care of the actual decision making.

Why?

I agree to 100%. But that's another thing entirely, you wouldn't really change the amount of wealth being directed to different countries by doing this thing, you would only change how it's being distributed within said country. The richest 1% in the US owns about 40% of the wealth, apparently (the corresponding number in Sweden being ~33%). There's no chance in the world that they are doing that much of the work. This is simply a grotesquely bad way of distributing the produced wealth, and something should be done about it.

It's true that democracy does not automatically yield the system that's best for all. It's good because the leaders have to answer to the people, who can un-elect them. This stops them from thinking of their own good instead of the good of the people. The one who gets the votes is usually just the loudest one. This does not mean that we should abolish democracy for a system like, say, China's, though.

It's not that easy to just quit your job and find a new one. You're not working where you do entirely by free will, you have to have a work.

When it comes to democracy in politics, there's much bigger interests in the picture. There would be little reason for a person running for CEO to hold emotional speeches or making catchy phrases on why you should pick him/her. There would (I hope!) not be lobbyists, defame or defacement. One could also scale it down a bit, letting the middle managers be elected and letting these elect the CEO, or something like that.

Again, no direct democracy. We would still have people being specialized at management, the difference being that they're being approved by the rest of the company, or employed if you want. And everyone realizes that you need new products and ideas to stay afloat, they wouldn't fire a manager for creating new products. Google would still have begun working on project glass. I wonder how often there's really this genius with a brilliant idea that nobody else believes in, but he just happens to control a company and tells it to invest in it, and it becomes a great success. Really. If you have an idea you can always patent it. I would believe that the people currently managing the companies would mostly also be the ones chosen to do so (but they would have to allocate the profit in another way).

Just look up lists of the countries said to have the world's best healthcare. I'm not sure exactly how they make the lists, but it's likely more than just average life span (I think they're being made by the World Health Organization). The top ones, number one being France I think, have universal government health care, not commercial one. And it is, as I said, a great lot cheaper. It's not necessarily slower either, even though I've heard that's an issue in Canada. I've not had that problem at all. With commercial health care you also have a lot of other problems, like scrimping, scamping, coverage issues, profit interest, them trying to create hypochondriacs, and so on.

 

Once again, that would be a good way of going about doing this, but eventually you're going to have to directly screw with private industry in order to do this. Inevitably the way you seem to be presenting this is as a hunch and nothing more. The economic logic would certainly indicate that these sorts of firms would be less efficient. At any point in time workers are free to form a company that adheres to these principles, but they never have.

That does solve some problems, but it also introduces others. It also doesn't get around the fact that workers aren't qualified to choose their leaders in the first place.

Now here I'm not talking about recessions because those have their own unique economic conditions that complicate the matter, however with a society that is at what we call "full employment" most resources within society are being employed to produce wanted goods and services. Merely increasing consumption in one industry means that resources are drawn away from other industries and to that industry, meanwhile increasing consumption overall from the monetary end through an increase in the money supply (if money were neutral) merely increases prices everywhere.

At any one point in time the resources of an economy are fixed, we cannot increase the amount that we can produce, but over time we can produce things which can increase our productivity, but this has to come at the cost of current consumption. I can either have a company that produces bikes now, or I can instead take the resources that make those bikes and redirect them to making a factory. The factory increases our productive capacity, but it means that resources have to be redirected from current enjoyment to future expansion of the productive structure and enjoyment. But how is this done?

Answer: savings and investment. By saving my money and putting it into a bank this money is invested into companies. This decreases consumption now, and instead redirects these resources to long term usage. A large increase in investment "indicates" to the economy that people care less about goods today (indicated by the fact that they aren't spending) and care more about enjoying goods tomorrow (indicated by their investment for a small percentage of return at a future date). This means that long term projects such as construction and the like are now more profitable and we move from producing things today and keeping our productive capacity relatively stagnant, to increasing it in the future and enjoying a higher productive capacity. The opposite happens if consumption as a whole increases. People live better today, but their future standards of living are not what they otherwise could have been.

Thusly savings that are invested are by far the best thing for an economy in the long run.

Now, unless you're claiming that all third world labor is slave labor, then how do you reconcile your two different viewpoint expressed here.

This is something that I'm curious about. Now I have a different viewpoint on all this, but forgetting about that, can you explain to me about how you that, despite the fact that Sweden has a far more "progressive" system of taxation and wealth redistribution that the United States that there's only an 18% difference in the centralization of wealth between the two nations? It wouldn't seem like the Swedish way is particularly effective.

I never said it was, we agree that democracy isn't an especially grand system, I'm just arguing that those that the market has usually provided are far superior, therefore we shouldn't attempt to replace the market system with a democratic one.

You would still have many of the same problems on each level. Democracy just isn't a particularly effective system and there's no reason why it would be.

Why? Their incentive structure is now entirely different. All they have to do is to convince the masses of laborers, who are mainly doing their jobs, not focusing on what higher management is doing, that they are good for the company, they don't have to maximize the firms profits.

First of all this is a total non-answer to anything that I actually posted. I gave you an extensive list of reasons why the American system is not a free market healthcare system and how getting rid of the discrepancies that prevented it from being such a system would decrease the price of healthcare and make it better for everyone. You didn't say why any of those things was wrong, nor why anything that I advocated would not bring about what I think it would, instead you simply say that socialized healthcare services are the best in the world. That's fine, I generally agree with that (I disagree in that I think that coverage when you can get it is usually better in the United States), however when the only thing you have to compare these systems to is the United States healthcare service, which I explicitly stated was awful, this is in no way evidence that the system I am advocating is inferior. Instead the fact that the United States is so close to these socialized countries at all, when it is such a horrible system, is a testament to how poor socialized healthcare is relative to what a real free market healthcare system could be.

 

Life isn't fair. The sooner you realize that the better off you will be. Everybody gets dealt a bad hand at some point in their life. It's what they do with that is what makes the difference. If you sit and hope to rely on someone else, you should have to suffer. If you otherwise decide to get up off your ass and do something about it, then you will be rewarded. Life is far from a Utopia, life is life and (*)(*)(*)(*) happens. You have to learn to deal with it. College teaches you Utopia, which does not exist and never will, not as long as humans are involved. You should know that by now. Collectivism is a joke, because it cannot exist, not while humans are involved.

 

Up until the industrial revolution, combined with capitalism, produced enough wealth to support our entitlement society, our safety net was our family, friends, and acquaintances. We cared for each other. Those that paid into the favor bank could draw from it. Those that wanted to live off the labor of others were soon found out, and their support stopped.

 

Yes, if one decides to go through with it, one would eventually have to have a transition phase for private industry (unless you don't want to implement it to the whole market).

Could be because the people forming a company would rather keep their positions secured.

It's possible that you're right, but it's also possible that you're not. We don't know that. It could just as well increase the competition for these positions.
And even if it would slow down economical growth, it could be worth the sacrifice if the difference is pretty small (as you spend a relatively large percentage of your time at work, improving that time could translate to a greater increase in quality of life than the loss you suffer on your free time).

Most people probably questions democracy a bit deep inside when the party they didn't support gets elected, but democracy isn't that bad, even though it has it's problems. Democratic decision making in companies would probably work differently than democratic decision making in politics anyway. For a head of department, people would want someone who were able to create good working environments, good relationships and so on. It's on a way more personal plane. When it comes to the highest management, people would want the one who could benefit the company the most, ie someone with good merits. Just like when any of the other employees got employed, the management would have their skills examined and the most fit would be employed, or they would just go for the one they've had up until now if there hasn't been any problems. I doubt Apple would have removed Steve Jobs, for instance. The employees do, sort of, replace the share holders. The main differences would be that nepotism would decrease, that working conditions would increase and that wages would be fairer. But I guess you could also fix the management's salaries on a certain percent of the company's income to increase their motivation.

Giving private households more economical movement does not only mean increased demand, it also means that they would have the chance to pay of their loans and save more money. And a company having higher demand on their products might feel more secure investing. Besides, we don't have full employment. But you do certainly have a point.

No, that's what I'm not doing. What I mean is that the companies could possibly be less prone to underpaying their third-world employees or letting them work under dangerous conditions.

This isn't a problem that can be taxed away, apparently. The welfare solves other problems, but not this one. This is one of the reasons I'm interested in democratic companies in the first place.

You have a point here as well, the US might be stuck in a bad middle- ground. But I wouldn't completely deregulate something such as health care, there needs to be guidelines since this is people's health we're talking about (to guarantee a certain quality). You would also have to have some sort of voucher- system to guarantee everyone's equal access to health care (I mean, stuff for your home and fun things for your free time is one thing, but your access to health care should not be restricted by your ability to make money, and even if you think that it should, you have to agree that everyone should have access to at least some basic care). And one does also have to remember that there are inevitably a few built- in problems with commercial health care. One thing is that the companies wouldn't make the most money by having healthy people, they would on the contrary want people to be as sick as possible (or believe that they are as sick as possible). They would also want to scare people into taking unnecessary examinations to make more money. They would also be tempted to save money for salaries by scrimping on treatments (this might not be obvious enough for the customers to change provider). And in the end I doubt that the costs would be halved, which is necessary to cut them down to what universal health care can cost.

 

You're oversimplifying. People who are stuck in poverty are not so just because they're lazy.

It would also be nice if someone could define "collectivism".

 

That's not very nice for those belonging to the working class, whose family might not be able to support an unemployed person.

 

What is the cost to support someone that is out of work and moves in with a relative or friend? Wouldn't even a part time, minimum wage job make up the difference?

What is that persons incentive to find another job?

If that person had no interest in finding a job, how long would it take to figure that out an kick their butt out on the street?


The problem is government is removing most of the risk.

Has that inspired entrepreneurship (as socialist would have us believe), or perpetual childhood?

We bail out state governments, business, unions, and people. How do people act when they get the upside, but government protects against the downside? They take even greater risks. And, the taxpayer (or should I say the yet to become taxpayers) pay for those risks.

 

This was a long (and pretty decent) response, so I'll just respond to what sticks out to me the most.

This shows a lack of entrepreneurship and spontaneous centralization on behalf of the working person. All that any group of workers would have had to do throughout the past 200 years would have been to pool their own money, or to take a loan out and implement the form of representative workplace democracy which you propose, but they never have. This is a massive failing and representative of the failing of workers at planning even if you are correct. It is a self refuting position.

Yes, maybe I am wrong and maybe you're right, but maybe we're both wrong. Maybe the best economic system is to find 14 year old miscreants and put them in charge of a company because they would have the necessary street experience to know what people really want and how to boss others around properly. Maybe this system would radically increase productivity and wages for all. It's a possibility and neither of us could say a priori that it is wrong, however we could levy any number of objections as to why it is probably wrong.

This is exactly what you are supporting here. I can (and have) given you economic reasons why this system would probably make everyone in society worse off, yet you are clinging to this doctrine based upon what would appear to be a vague hope that it will improve things. You're willing to try to put the 14 year olds in charge even though you have no reason to believe that it would work.

If individuals were willing to sacrifice growth and higher wages for leisure (something that I am sympathetic to, I enjoy leisure more than I do money most of the time) then it would be profitable for companies to do so since companies that offered better work conditions could higher employees much more cheaply. We see this in France where people work a lot less than in the United States. Firms that attempted to book them for longer hours would not have any qualified applicants.

You're not answering of my objections as to why this would not be the case. Everything that you're talking about assumes that workers aren't foolish, don't misinterpret their own needs, and aren't deceived. Politics has shown the failure of this system time and time again in practice. There is no reason to believe that workers wouldn't make foolish choices in their leaders, and every reason to believe that they wouldn't.

You can't have, in sustainable real terms, an increase in consumption and an increase in savings, you can only have one or the other. For instance if 20% of GDP is spent on investment then you can't change this percentage by increasing the amount you consume, any increase in spending will merely decrease this number, and once again if we are at full employment, an increase in both savings and consumption will merely cause inflation.

I realize that we aren't at full employment now, but this doesn't mean that an increase in spending is necessarily the answer. This is a whole other issue that I'd really rather not get into now because it's very complex.


No, that's what I'm not doing. What I mean is that the companies could possibly be less prone to underpaying their third-world employees or letting them work under dangerous conditions.



This isn't a problem that can be taxed away, apparently. The welfare solves other problems, but not this one. This is one of the reasons I'm interested in democratic companies in the first place.

Why? Doctors who provided bad treatment would quickly be weeded out or sued, giving every doctor an incentive not to provide such bad treatment in the first place.

Basic healthcare was usually provided in the United States before the government stepped in. The very problem right now is that you can demand as much healthcare as you want if you do fall into the safety net. You don't need the government to guarantee something in order to have it granted.

This doesn't really happen in the capitalist economy. There are many more negative repercussions such as this that are likely to occur in a socialized system because doctors don't have to provide very good care. If companies skimp on treatment or refuse to treat people then they're replaced by companies who will, just like if another type of company tried to do so. This does not mean that the healthcare will be perfect, but very extreme repercussions would be negligible

I wholly disagree. If we look back to the 1960's, when the system was far more like I currently propose it to be, healthcare spending in the United States as a portion of GDP was about a third of what it is now (5%), which is among the lowest of such countries today. It would also be able to greatly exceed public healthcare systems in terms of general quality, something which it usually does even today. You want the most historical numbers, well there they are, and they exceed what you say the break even point would have to be.

 

I'm sorry that it's taking so long for me to respond, I'm trying to find time.

When it comes to democratic companies, the discussion has now boiled down to whether people would be too stupid to employ their own manager or not.
Again, you can't assume that democracy in companies would have the same fuss as ordinary democracy in politics has. There is several things making this different. There wouldn't be loyalty towards parties or ideologies etc. You are basically saying that people are stupid and has to be commanded by share holders who aren't even working in the interest of employees , but only their own. I'ts sort of as if we would abolish democracy in favor of many small dictatorship states and have people move to the state they like the most (until that one gets full). Remember, more or less everything is already done by the employees, they are the company. Shouldn't they own themselves? One could also, instead of having a system where everyone takes part of the "election", having representatives chosen at random to form a council and let them study the subject in detail. If it's a representative sample, the result would be the same as if everyone had studied the subject thoroughly and would (hopefully) lead to a more informed decision. The company could also hire economists and take their advice. One could decide that there would only be a reevaluation of the management and an "election" when, say, two thirds of the employees report that they are unhappy with how things are done. There are countless possible solutions.
I'm not even saying this would necessarily have to be government enforced. If this happened spontaneously that would be even better. I doubt the richest share holders would sell off their profitable shares to their employees for a price all their employees could afford and everyone would end up owning equally many just like that though. It would be difficult. But as long as the government has showed the way by applying it to the sectors they control and experimented forth a working model people at least knows their options, and it would be easier and safer to found new companies using this model. That could be enough government interference and the people would take it from there if they're interested enough. And, ultimately, if it would be entirely impossible to create an efficient model for business based on the principles of democracy that would become obvious during the government's testing, but we do not have strong enough reasons to believe that that is the case to not even test it.

Counting in percentages of the economy as a whole, yes, but you could move some of the consumption from rich to averages and poor, and some of the savings, and so on. So consumption and wealth could increase in ordinary house holds without necessarily increasing consumption and wealth in the economy as a whole, if that would cause problems.

No reason to not have the extra safety for the customers though.

"Usually" isn't good enough. There has to be a stable system which makes it entirely impossible to go without health care for whatever reason. Government is certainly a way, though it's not necessarily the only way. But it's a way that works, and it does so without getting any complaints. And I do personally think that it's uncivilized to give the poor any worse health care than the rich, but that's another question.

Highly educated doctors will always try to give the best treatment they can offer to people if they know they have the resources they need and their salary secured. Health care doesn't work in the same way as, for instance, telecom companies, or any other ordinary sector, where it's always about maximizing profit in proportion to invested time. If you give the doctors what they need they will treat after best ability. You wouldn't, as a doctor, stop doing your best for the patients out of sheer laziness. You wouldn't stop trying to come up with improvements because you won't get rewarded enough money. Sectors where people are mainly motivated by devotion to the work itself and not the money, such as health care and science, are not in need of competition. The problems start when they have to be concerned about market shares, insurances and so on. Then you have to rationalize. You would get owners with profit interest in your way. And then it's suddenly not the well being of people you are working for, it's the profit. This is often the same thing, but also far too often not. There is no mechanism preventing the owners from trying to scare people into taking unnecessary examinations and so on. People are not informed enough on the topic of health care to notice such small skimping and cheating.

(1/3)/(1/2)=2/3~0,67. This means that that health care system would be around 33% cheaper than socialized health care. It was difficult to find numbers from back then, but it seems like around 25-30% of the US population lacked health care coverage. This would mean that the price wasn't really much cheaper, only 5- 10% cheaper per person ((67/75)/(1/1)~0,89). Then we have to question the actual quality.

Yeah, sure, withdraw your savings, sell your home and move in with a friend. Seriously. A system that requires that if you happen to lose your job is a bad system.

Oh, I dunno, maybe getting money to actually do stuff, having something to do during the days and getting a social life? The percentage of unemployed people who are happy with being unemployed is tiny. People wants to do something meaningful with their life, achieve something, not just lying around.

Just look at how frequently they apply for a job.

First of all, you're using the word "socialist" wrong. What you mean is social democrats or social liberals. Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Social democracy and social liberalism is when you create tax-funded support for poor people.

Secondly, there has been a crisis. They require unormal economical behavior. The bailouts are to solve the economical problems.

Thirdly, people do not work less hard when there's a universal safety net.

 

That is what you have to do if you are middle class or above. Unemployment doesn't even pay 1/2 my mortgage.

Would you support a system that provided the income required to maintain a lifestyle wage during unemployment for all, not just the "poor"?

How many people would tell their boss to take this job and shove it, if they would get the same weekly income, employed or not?

There are a lot of things that people find meaningful, that don't provide gainful employment. For some, taking care of a sick relative is meaningful, for many more it is playing video games and partying.

"Applying" for a job, to comply with unemployment requirements? How may research the company, research the position and re-write their resume for that specific job? How many network, trying to find the un-posted jobs? How many turned down jobs because they don't want them? How many don't apply for jobs they could get, but are beneath them?

Poor people? Is 1/3 of the population poor? If not, why do they get money in one way or another, from government?

This conversation is about the collectivism version of socialism - the collective means of production has been discussed and isn't a problem, partially because it that is completely acceptable in capitalism, partially because it has proven ineffective at competing in capitalism.

So, government always has a surplus, which they save for abnormal economical behavior? ROTFL

No matter how much money government gets, it will always spend more.

Do you have any proof?

How many lifetime hours of work is done in Europe, where there is a good safety net? How many in the US, where we have a mediocre safety net? How many in China where there is little to no safety net?

 

People who makes more money can be expected to have savings or insurances to back them up. Government support would be mainly for those who haven't had the chance to get that.

Not the same, enough to support them until they can get a new job.

You don't have to be so suspicious. Again, most unemployed people do not like being unemployed. Why would you want to live on a tiny amount of money each month? Most people wouldn't feel too happy about leaching of tax payers on purpose. Why do you all have the assumption that unemployed people are unemployed because they are lazy or something?

I assume you are talking about the US now? I'm not excessively informed on the mechanisms of US welfare. 1/3 of the US population makes around 3300$/month or less... is it really the poorest 1/3 who are getting this, then? I need more information to make a comment on that, and remember that I don't necessarily support what the US government does.

Keynesian economics.

It's your nooby US- government getting you a deficit higher than your gdp. Our (Sweden's) deficit is "only" ~40% of our gdp.

Well, counting in productivity per hour, Norway and Luxembourg apparently exceeds the US (and most of the more well off European countries aren't too far behind, France is, for instance, 4% behind and Germany 7%). Europe as a whole is about 20% behind though, but remember that Greece and Spain and those countries are lowering the average due to their current problems. It should also be noted that the unemployment in Norway is 3% (and Sweden's unemployment is at about US level). Counting in hours worked per employed person each year, Sweden is 8% behind the US and Norway even more, but that's because of more vacation.

 

I've always thought that a corporation was like collectivism, just on a smaller, voluntary scale. A bunch of people pool their resources for some venture.. they produce a product or service, sell it, & make a profit. This is exactly what the collectivists want on a national scale, it's just not voluntary. I find it ironic that the collectivists blast the 'evil corporations' for their collectivist schemes. I guess it is the competition. Collectivists don't like it. They want a monopoly on power & control. If they have to compete, or rely on voluntary cooperation, they fail.

If the collectivist's utopia is so clear, why does it never work? Why can't they succeed with competition? They should have thousands of shining examples of the virtues of collectivism in the corporate world. But no. They hate the corporate world, because they have the money & the power. And they don't want to work or compete for those things, so they propose TAKING it from others who have.

Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist seeing the rich man and his fine home says, “No man should have so much.” The capitalist seeing the same thing says, “All men should have as much.” ~Phelps Adams

 

We have more savings, and more credit, to get us past loss of employment. But, we also have larger house payments, car payments, etc. Very few of the upper middle class can survive 6 months without work without tapping their retirement. In addition, those earning median income have specialized, which gives them higher earning capability, and limits the number of jobs they are qualified for.

What happens when they are quite happy not having a job?

Europe has a more homogenous population than the US - remember, we are the melting pot of the world. A homogenous population behaves more like a large family, you take care of those that fell on bad times, and those on bad times work hard to get back on their feet.

That mechanism isn't very effective in the US. In addition, politicians keep telling the poor it isn't their fault they are poor. Free riding has been a problem for many decades in the US.

Income isn't just welfare. SSI, disability, medical, income for those employed (about 1/10), etc.

Are you happy with a debt of 40% of GDP? Would 100% make you happier?

I'm not talking about hours per year, or productivity per hour.

I'm talking about total hours worked in a lifetime. What is the average age the workplace is entered, the average retirement age, hours per work week, number of holidays per year, weeks of vacation per year, etc.

In the US, start work around 20, retire at 67. Work 48 weeks a year, 10 days off for vacation, 10 days a year for holidays. 40 hours a week (most white collar jobs run 50 to 70 hours per week) - 90,240 lifetime hours.

Please correct me if my Google searching is wrong, but the work week in Sweden is 26 hours, with 25 vacation days and 11 holidays. Assuming work starts at 20, and ends at 65 - 52,650 lifetime hours.

My understanding of China, 60 hours a week, but more holidays, not sure about vacation, but I expect China's lifetime hours exceeds the US.

Productivity has far more to do with automation than effectiveness.