Why do people create false dichotomies?
Apr. 10th, 2006 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonchameleonMoved to my journal because this was getting far too far offtopic.
In response to someone on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
abortiondebate claiming that socialism is discredited
In order to have working capitalism, you need a workign market. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
In order to set up a market, the first thing you need [EDIT from comments elsewhere: the second thing you need - the first thing is something to trade] is enough force to make sure that it is more efficient for any individual trader to barter at the market rather than simply hire a pack of brigands and rob the market. By the same token, these guards need to be under the control of someone sufficiently powerful that telling the guards to rob the market will gain him very little - and he needs sufficient control over those guards that they don't rob the merchants. If all this doesn't hold, then it is too risky for merchants to trade anything except luxuries, so capitalism isn't worth it.
The second thing you need for a market is a relatively strong legal system - one which gives a good chance of restitution for wrongdoing. For obvious reasons, this needs to be independent of the control of the merchants and stronger than any individual one of them. It also can not be financed by the merchants due to incentives of this nature perverting justice.
The third thing you need is some form of infrastructure. There needs to be some way to get to the market reasonably safely. Over sea, this is reasonably easy - you need boats and enough of an escort to prevent piracy (of course a navy wiping out the pirates actually works out cheaper than each caravan hiring a big guard, but this is not necessary). Over land, it's much harder as you need some form of road (or rail, river, or canal) network (and taxing the direct users of these roads. You can't put the roads under the control of a directly profit making entity because you've just produced a monopoly under the control of a corporation due to land being limited. You therefore need someone disinterested and powerful to run it. (Yes, you can then subcontract out the maintainance - but this is only subcontracting).
For reasons I've outlined (if not fully explained) above, all the above need to be funded by an institution bigger than the merchants themselves. As you can't rely on benevolent autocracies and oligarchies having bottomless coffers to maintain things, taxes are probably the best way of funding them. Hence you need some measure of socialism to maintain capitalism.
At this point the only question becomes where to strike the balance - too much socialism and the capital generation dries up, too little and the capitalism fails to work.
As for socialism outside the direct maintainance of the market, sewer socialism (and public health generally) is simply cheaper and more efficient to impliment through socialism than it is for people not to have working sewers and vaccinations - it cuts down disease prevelance significantly enough and helps everyone that it is worth it. I could easily go on.
In response to someone on
abortiondebate claiming that socialism is discredited In order to have working capitalism, you need a workign market. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
In order to set up a market, the first thing you need [EDIT from comments elsewhere: the second thing you need - the first thing is something to trade] is enough force to make sure that it is more efficient for any individual trader to barter at the market rather than simply hire a pack of brigands and rob the market. By the same token, these guards need to be under the control of someone sufficiently powerful that telling the guards to rob the market will gain him very little - and he needs sufficient control over those guards that they don't rob the merchants. If all this doesn't hold, then it is too risky for merchants to trade anything except luxuries, so capitalism isn't worth it.
The second thing you need for a market is a relatively strong legal system - one which gives a good chance of restitution for wrongdoing. For obvious reasons, this needs to be independent of the control of the merchants and stronger than any individual one of them. It also can not be financed by the merchants due to incentives of this nature perverting justice.
The third thing you need is some form of infrastructure. There needs to be some way to get to the market reasonably safely. Over sea, this is reasonably easy - you need boats and enough of an escort to prevent piracy (of course a navy wiping out the pirates actually works out cheaper than each caravan hiring a big guard, but this is not necessary). Over land, it's much harder as you need some form of road (or rail, river, or canal) network (and taxing the direct users of these roads. You can't put the roads under the control of a directly profit making entity because you've just produced a monopoly under the control of a corporation due to land being limited. You therefore need someone disinterested and powerful to run it. (Yes, you can then subcontract out the maintainance - but this is only subcontracting).
For reasons I've outlined (if not fully explained) above, all the above need to be funded by an institution bigger than the merchants themselves. As you can't rely on benevolent autocracies and oligarchies having bottomless coffers to maintain things, taxes are probably the best way of funding them. Hence you need some measure of socialism to maintain capitalism.
At this point the only question becomes where to strike the balance - too much socialism and the capital generation dries up, too little and the capitalism fails to work.
As for socialism outside the direct maintainance of the market, sewer socialism (and public health generally) is simply cheaper and more efficient to impliment through socialism than it is for people not to have working sewers and vaccinations - it cuts down disease prevelance significantly enough and helps everyone that it is worth it. I could easily go on.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 11:09 pm (UTC)And the different purchasing powers runs along the same lines as my criticism of the current model of "free trade" - that it is only freedom of capital and not of labour, meaning that it is inherently unbalancing and regressive.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 11:59 pm (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/abortiondebate/353898.html
Cheers for that one!
That was a pretty good explanation that you just gave, and its pretty accurate too.
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT...
You said it yourself, too much socialism and the market will disintigrate through a pretty wide variety of causes.
As you probably know, the underclass, the working class and unemployed, at least here in Ozland breed the fastest. This group in society produces little, but they consume more than any other class due to sheer numbers.
The hard working middle class, the backbone of the economy, and the biggest producers, are increasingly taxed to death to pay for them.
Currently, here in Australia, our social welfare is such that the unemployed are able to live very comfortably at the expense of the taxpayer. That is something which I vehemetely disagree with. I'm a poor uni student, I know that in the future when I get my BDS, I will contribute massively to taxes. Yet I am still not eligible for Student Allowance, for reasons known only to Centrelink. Their logic is that my parents earn enough money. But I dont understand, my parents pay more taxes than most others, why am I not entitled to some of that money? My parents do not give me an allowance, and doing BDS for 40 hours a week it is a little difficult to find a job, currently I am a professional card counter, and when in season, a fruit picker, but its hardly a long term job prospect is it?
If I am not entitled to it, even though I will contribute massively to the economy at the end of my degree, do you think that these lazy unemployed slobs deserve it?
With an economy like Australia, which is suffering already from a shortage of workers, theres not really an excuse to be unemployed long term.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 11:37 am (UTC)Not really. Too much socialism and the market will collapse under its own weight. Too little and it will disintegrate...
I don't know enough about how Australia sets the ballance and whether it is the right one to be able to comment (but it sounds as if Australia has screwed students over even more than Britain has).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 01:33 am (UTC)Here in Ozland, everything is based on how much daddy earns, and my dad, being a dentist, makes me not eligible for student allowance, and Centerlink not only doesnt not encourage students to claim, but actively makes it difficult for them to do so here.
Is student union compulsory over there? Here it still is but not after July 1; that said, I will still pay, because I am running for a position on the union board and trying to rid it of corruption that these fascist socialist leaders have instilled into it.
On that note, its no wonder VSU has majority support by students, because the corrupt leaders have made it so unattractive to join. Oh well, we'll see.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 01:37 am (UTC)I hate it when I see those lazy Bachelor of Arts students who will generate no taxes who have something like 10 contact hours a week and an almost-full-time job get a free $300 a fortnight just because their parents are lazy and have no job.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 09:29 am (UTC)In Britain, you get a core paid by the government no matter what your parents earn - and then there is an extra amount your parents are expected to pay. If you can demonstrate that there is no way your parents are going to pay this (and this isn't easy apparently), you can be put into the no paerental income category.
Is student union compulsory over there?
Well, I never joined - but that's pretty rare, in essence because joining usually saves you much more money than it costs.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-13 12:11 am (UTC)maybe over there, since the unions are trying to make joining attractive as possible, but here our unions do not have to do that. Our unions throw away exorbitant amounts of money on thier incumbent leaders election campaigns, pointless free barbecues, discrediting thier rivals in the student news letter, anti-Howard protests and other things which the average student finds totallly useless.
Here in Adelaide Uni, the Unibar is one of the most popular pubs in Adelaide, it hosts big name artists like Children of Bodom, Opeth, Pete Murray, etc. and its prices are no cheaper than any other pub, yet for some reason it consistently loses money every year. Doesnt it scream corruption to you? Or at very very best, massive inefficiency? If it were the real world there would probably have been a few arrests by now.
I would have no qualm about joining the union if they spent money on important things like more scholarships, uni-books subsidising, medical/dental services, employment services, counsellors, legal services, just to name a few. Even though I wouldnt benefit from any of them, except for maybe uni-books subsidising, (my dad and my cousins still have most of the textbooks). I'd rather see my money going to help tomorrows leaders.
See, I do have a sense of social justice after all :D
no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 11:31 am (UTC)But me thinks you've been arguing with
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 01:34 am (UTC)**take 2, the first one didnt work**
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 02:43 pm (UTC)To describe
no subject
Date: 2006-04-13 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-13 09:05 am (UTC)Where are find medical funny pictory?
Date: 2007-09-07 08:19 am (UTC)Where are find medical funny pictory?
Bye
type of bodybuilding
Date: 2007-11-29 09:09 pm (UTC)Generally speaking, the average fitness enthusiast has very little desire to ever look like a bodybuilder.