Comment on Something something far-left
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks agoThe rational left (i.e. not the authoritarians) only want the “government” to own everything insomuch as the “government” is profoundly democratic.
Don’t confuse “private property” (industrial machines and other means of productions held privately by an investor class in order to extract profit via the arbitrage between the productive value of employees and their flat wages) with “personal property” (your house, car, clothes, dishes, toothbrush, etc.). There aren’t many leftists who think there shouldn’t be personal property.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Private property that isn’t personal is someone elses property, and if I want to have my own property it makes sense for others to also have it
I don’t want the govt owning my home, or having to rent from a govt, and I dont want to drink water from govt owned companies because at that point it truly is authoritarian simply because the govt has way too much power over your life
I’ve been on .ml before and theres more than a few people than think NK and Stalin are/were good, and are anti-private property
Novocirab@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Been drinking tap water straight from government-owned companies for decades
Still, though, you’re right that the question of the state not owning everything is a very serious one that needs to be addressed.
What are your thoughts on cooperatives, libertarian socialism, or anarchist communism?
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
My government owned power utility is selling me the cheapest electricity of all the OECD, and still turning a profit that’s returned in the government’s coffers to invest in research and social services. It’s awful!
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
What I don’t like isn’t the fact that the profits of the service aren’t going to shareholders, but because it gives the govt more power over you. This is fine if you trust the govt, but at some point there is an extreme of trusting the govt with too much. like I wouldn’t want the chinese govt controlling my finances
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I think a major problem with decentralizing too much is that basic goods that the modern world needs, like artificial fertilizers and computer chips cant be produced or if they can be produced they cant be made in large quantities. What I understand anarchist communism to be is many small communities of people that collectively grow their own food and make their own medicines, without much large scale trade. With libertarian socialism and cooperatives there’s still the issues that if the workers own the factories they aren’t going to be incentivized to take risks with the company, the average worker has no idea about macro-economics and how to run the business, and they also wont want to lower their wages if its necessary (like if the company is doing poorly or if there needs to be additional financial motivation for low preforming workers - obviously that can get out of hand but some of it makes sense). To somewhat even out the wealth gap I think higher taxes on the wealthy and more rights for unions is pretty much all that is needed.
in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I’m sure if we asked the billionaires and their paid-for politicians nicely, they’ll start writing and enforcing laws that’ll tax them more and give more rights to unions.
Hard /s
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Everyone is entitled to personal property, the things they have for personal use (e.g. your house or toothbrush). Private property is not someone else’s personal property, it’s the things for group use which generate value to the group (e.g. the industrial equipment necessary to create your house or toothbrush) which under capitalism are owned and controlled by investors.
The leftist position is that those “means of production” being owned and controlled by investors leads to the investors paying their staff as little as possible while charging as much as possible, so that they can thrive on the difference between prices and wages.
The leftist solution is for those “means of production” to be owned collectively by the people who actually use them to produce things. There’s a whole spectrum of exactly what that looks like.
On one side are those who think the government should own everything. The argument being that, assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt, that is the best way to coordinate resources. This is logically sound, since the resources which would be wasted on marketing, and redundant R&D in competing companies, and other capitalist inefficiencies, could be directed productively. The flaw is in the “assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt” part. That’s a big reason why the USSR failed.
On the other side, there are those who think that the basic concepts of market economics are sound, the problem is simply the capitalist-worker relationship. The argument being, capitalism can be subverted while retaining the benefits of market economies through co-ops: instead of revenue being paid in part to wages with the remaining profit being divided along shareholders, the revenue after costs is divided totally among the employees, who are themselves the only shareholders. This preserves the competitive innovation of the market, while excising the parasitic capital class.
Only the most extreme zealots in the Soviet camp ever push for abolishing personal property. That’s a fringe position even for the left.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
after you say this
you say they are this
that stuff is the investors personal property (or the corporations but that is a technicality) and them selling it to me is fine as long as there is meaningful competition and no monopolies and govt regulations stopping them from putting toxins in it or something. I dont think the best solution to high prices and wealth inequality is taking the personal property away from these investors and handing it to their employees (who lets be honest probably don’t know much about economics) who aren’t motivated to take risks with the company and aren’t motivated to lower their wages when the company needs to save money or isn’t production much money. This lowers the competitiveness of the company, but having a CEO to manage all this while being kept in check with a union is a fine solution to this.
If there is a wealth gap higher taxes on the wealthy is all that is really needed to even it out
Without capital new factories wont be built btw, unless you have a bank or investor financing them. And I don’t think bank tellers should get a say in what the bank invests in (if its run by the workers this would happen, as the bank teller is a worker at the bank), because they very probably don’t know about the finances and economics of the industry the bank is investing in and wouldn’t have an educated opinion on the matter. I would rather have investors (who may have more money than others, but if its too much taxes can fix that, not funky ownership stuff needed) picking small companies, giving them money and later getting back their money as the small companies grow.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 weeks ago
I’m pretty sure private for-profit water is absolutely worse than government run water. Everyone can at least nominally vote to change the government. A private org is beholden to no one except shareholders (if they have any), and maybe laws (if they exist, are relevant, and are enforced).
We already had a gilded age where we learned how low for-profit entities will go. We had saw dust in bread, chalk in milk, and worse.
For profit food production is giving us price gouging and a water crisis. Would government do better? Well, given the current administration maybe not.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
i edited my comment before your reply to note that I simply used water as an example because it came first to my mind and there are better ones
As I wrote in my edited comment (that was changed before you replied) there are better examples of my point that I don’t want too much govt control, for example I wouldn’t want all the farms in my country controlled by the govt
And their consumers. An orange juice company tries to make their product sold, and at the end of the day they rely on you to buy it. If enough people don’t, they will increase the quality of their juice or decrease the price to increase sales.
You should realize that companies need to compete with each other, and because of that they cant visibly increase the price of a good too much or lower its quality because they will lose sales. Anywhere where this doesn’t happen laws can be written to force them
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 weeks ago
Meanwhile, we have “shrinkflation” and consolidation into fewer and fewer companies.
For vital services, what are you going to do? Not get health care? Not buy fruit anymore?
The natural end state of private ownership is monopoly/cartel. We’ve done all of this before and it sucked. Being “beholden to customers” doesn’t matter much if they’re a captive market, or there’s really only one seller with no vote
Maybe if we actually enforced laws about competition it would be better, but good luck getting people to learn from history.
rockerface@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
.ml folks aren’t far left, they’re full on authoritarian dictatorship apologists. They’re no more leftist than China is communist
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I think that depends on what you call far left. If you ask me thats exactly what it is, other than the exception of more libertarian- or even (another exreme) anarchic- communism
rockerface@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I guess I wouldn’t call them right wing either. The authoritarian side of the political compass kinda looks the same on every side, when it boils down to the actual policies they want
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
You’re a liberal then, pro-market with regulation, maybe a social democrat using Nordic countries as an example? With the overton window changing so much you’re not really a leftist anymore
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I kinda dislike all these terms like left, socalist, communism, ect because everyone has different understandings of them.
If you ask a right-leaning libertarian about the differences between socialism and communism, I imagine that they would say that their the same thing, and point to China or the USSR calling themselves socialist, while being communist (china not so much nowadays though)
I try not to categorize myself too much because of that
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
I’m getting the feeling that you’re from the US based on your distrust of the government, which in your case, I guess is fair.
But I think the person you’re replying to probably has in mind a situation that is much better than the current one in the US before we even start seriously considering buying up private property for the commons. The obvious first candidate would be utilities like water/power/internet. Without a profit motive or investors to pay off, they will offers the best service at the lowest price. Not to say private alternative wouldn’t exist, but that you would always have the cheaper public option to fall back on, and also keep the private alternatives from jacking up prices only the make a profit.
PS. I recommend turning off visible vote counts. Downvotes were getting under my skin too, but now all I see are comments.