Incentives under communism?

[Crezth]

This isn't a uniquely capitalist issue. China's regard for it's citizens isnt exactly something to write home about. Everyone plays the game

Well it is precisely a capitalist issue, as China is a part of capitalism, and so was the Soviet Union. These states understood there was a capitalist world order or superstructure that existed beyond any of them, that in fact also existed beyond the power of the capitalist imperialist states, who were also pieces of a broader system that they perceived had taken over everything and replaced the old world order ways of doing things everywhere. This is a process that has continued to this day and in fact has successfully transformed the entire world into a new kind of capitalist, industrialist world that harvests record numbers of resources and produces record numbers of manufactured goods.

The socialists have identified many ways of reconciling their regimes with the wider world, but none of these have really ever successfully created or defined a society entirely separate or apart from the global order. That is because it is futile to even attempt as much. Rather they are reconciling themselves and their people's needs with the needs of imperial capitalists, two forces at conflict in which they are the harmonious middle, and their ideology simply amounts to a strategy for survival and control. And truthfully this is not just a communist issue, but an issue with many, many societies around the world who for one reason or another struggle with the globalizing forces. Either it's a shell-shocked society in North Korea that tightly controls any and all interactions with the outside world, or whether it's an equally shell-shocked society in South Korea that has actually been fully captured by colonizing forces who put up lots of colorful signs but require half the population to live in small flooded basements in order to make ends meet. What has really occurred here? An epic battle between the forces of democratic thinking and communist thinking? Or perhaps are both societies at the mercy of forces beyond their control, and are merely reacting to the ever-changing material conditions of this brave new world?

 

[EgonSpengler]

Nice to see some nuance.

Abolishing all police a dumb idea, making them more accountable and adding mental health responders for non-violent situations is a great idea (and will save police budgets money in the long run)

I was a little annoyed with "defund the police" as a slogan, because it sounded like the idea was to abruptly yank police off the streets entirely and leave nothing in their place. As W. Kamau Bell pointed out, a simple Google search could tell someone what the ideas behind the slogan really are, but the clumsy slogan allowed the people who are profiting from the current system and the people who can only think in 1s & 0s to deliberately misrepresent it or avoid engaging with the substance of the ideas. The opportunity we had after Ferguson to have an actual national conversation about policing was at least partially wasted, and I'm sure the "Thin Blue Line" people were pleased as pie about that. Oh well.

 

[Crezth]

I was a little annoyed with "defund the police" as a slogan, because it sounded like the idea was to abruptly yank police off the streets entirely and leave nothing in their place. As W. Kamau Bell pointed out, a simple Google search could tell someone what the ideas behind the slogan really are, but the clumsy slogan allowed the people who are profiting from the current system and the people who can only think in 1s & 0s to deliberately misrepresent it or avoid engaging with the substance of the ideas. The opportunity we had after Ferguson to have an actual national conversation about policing was at least partially wasted, and I'm sure the "Thin Blue Line" people were pleased as pie about that. Oh well.

Oh please, if I’m playing for team blue line and you try a more nuanced slogan, I’ll just come back at you with “superpredators.” We didn’t get to be the most incarcerated nation in the world by having national dialogues, we got this way by monologuing! It never matters what the opposition actually says, it only matters how you can spin it.

 

[Gorbles]

Rest of the world doesn't hold a candle to that.

Tangent's getting too far into another football pitch for my liking, so I'll just leave you with a suggestion to Google "India and Britain". Cheers!

 

[EgonSpengler]

Oh please, if I’m playing for team blue line and you try a more nuanced slogan, I’ll just come back at you with “superpredators.” We didn’t get to be the most incarcerated nation in the world by having national dialogues, we got this way by monologuing! It never matters what the opposition actually says, it only matters how you can spin it.

Heck, they didn't even need to spin it. They only needed to repeat it and then stand there looking smug. 'Defund the police' sounds like we're advocating for no law enforcement or public safety of any kind, like we think The Purge would be a good idea. The defenders of the status quo had to be thrilled they were served such a big, fat pitch, right down the middle of the plate.*


* That's a baseball thing, for those outside N. America, Japan & Korea. It's like saying "it was an open goal."

 

[Zardnaar]

No one's really come up with any concrete solutions on the basics of communisms holes.

Who does the drudge work and how do you get them to do it.

Do our resident try hard believe in a more or less flat rate of pay under communism or acknowledge some jobs will get paid more?

Whoever runs this new utopia are going to become the new elite and if you have different paysvales you're gonna have a social hierarchy regardless.

None of the resident CFCers seem to have any experience in said drudge work and don't seem to keen in doing it themselves.

Fast food doesn't count. It's not that hard to do anyone able bodied can do it pretty much.

I used food as an example as you can't really opt out if producing it or brush it off and can't really automate it either.
Highest paid truck driver at my wife's logistics company was getting $250k a year ($150k usd).
He was one of their best workers did a lot behind thr scenes getting stuff from A to B.

So in 90s I did agricultural work market gardens, orchards processing plants. Worked in distribution centers.

If you can't adequately explain how under communism those type of jobs get done you've essentially lost your argument.

These jobs need to be done people have to eat. That food produced needs to go from A to B and eventually end up on supermarket shelves. On one job we harvested lettuce, loaded into the truck and delivered it to the Supermarket same day.

That's after the older guys planted it and later on we thinned it. And used the push hoes while it grew. Certain amount of finesse required.

After the revolution are those workers gonna get paid more? What if after liberation they prefer to move to the cities to take advantages and reasons political theory of the new regime in the library?

You cant hand wave this away with platitudes or imagine the future. Right here right now someone has to do it.

CFC potato harvest brigade. Gobbles, Lexicus and Crezth could go work on the farms on a nice hot summers day or frosty wet morning in the mud.

Imagine that. Here's a A-pak go fill it with broccoli or whatever. You get a knife to cut the stems the field is right there off you go. Cabbages go in larger bins buy you cant throw them in orbi damages the crop.

Ironically all the local farms had a Co op. That's where they delivered the crops so the trucks could come pick them up.

Few weeks of that you'll figure out the rural urban divide very fast no text book on communist theory required.

 

[Sarin]

Tangent's getting too far into another football pitch for my liking, so I'll just leave you with a suggestion to Google "India and Britain". Cheers!

High estimates put that at over 30M, less than half of high estimate for Mao. And that is in ~190 years. Communism racked up somewhere around 60-100M in seventy.

 

[Zardnaar]

High estimates put that at over 30M, less than half of high estimate for Mao. And that is in ~190 years. Communism racked up somewhere around 60-100M in seventy.

Wasn't that famine due to weather as well not deiberate government policy.

Cambodia killed about a third of the country in 4 years.

 

[Sarin]

Wasn't that famine due to weather as well not deiberate government policy.

Cambodia killed about a third of the country in 4 years.

This is more complicated matter. In some cases, there are signs of mismanagement from British. In others, they took active steps to prevent significant famines.

We can either count famine deaths for both, in which case we're looking at some 20-30M for UK against some 80-100M from communists. If we disregard famines, we're at what...20-40M for communism from internal oppression only, while in the west, it's nearly zero. Blame for war deaths in proxy wars should be shared equally, and in post-Soviet era, there's ballpark 500k civilians killed in various US conflicts, and Russia also had its share there.

 

[Hygro]

The immediate moves are taking away their guns, stamping out the "warrior" nonsense, training them to de-escalate and drastically reducing the scope of qualified immunity.

I can't answer what the future, perhaps centuries from now, will look like in any great detail. Again for the more immediate future, I think the places from which to draw inspiration are the Seattle and St. Louis general strikes, and the Paris Commune. Ideally perhaps the police would be a bit like jury duty, with people selected through sortition to serve on a temporary basis. Maybe a smaller unit that looks more like the police we have today, to deal with cases of extreme outlying violence.

Ok now do that for “incentives under communism”

 

[Moriarte]

These jobs need to be done people have to eat.

Do you think people Have to be coerced into doing unpleasant jobs? Is human an animal, which Needs to be underpaid and beaten with "the stick" regularly in order to perform unpleasant, but necessary jobs? (rhetorical questions, JIC, but you are welcome to answer them, if you want)

Primarily, communist theory concerns itself with guaranteeing equality of ownership of means of production of value. (Farms, Factories, etc.) Everything else stems from that 1st stage. If we agree that Soros and Zard are 1:1 equal under the sun and deserve fair ownership of the total product we all produce in the interconnected and interdependent world, then we can proceed further in this discussion - which form can this equality fill? Soft equality, hard equality, gradual equality? Communism, anarchism, socialism? If, on the other hand, the claim is that Zard is indeed inferior to Soros, and is not eligible to any form of equality with the almighty financier, then there isn't much left to discuss under current banner, we can just go on about our lives. You'll still remain a landowner of millions of acres of NZ fields filled with curly sheep you need to protect from ze commies, and I'll remain a greedy peasant stretching my hands towards your vast property from the underclasses.

 

[Zardnaar]

Do you think people Have to be coerced into doing unpleasant jobs? Is human an animal, which Needs to be underpaid and beaten with "the stick" regularly in order to perform unpleasant, but necessary jobs? (rhetorical questions, JIC, but you are welcome to answer them, if you want)

Primarily, communist theory concerns itself with guaranteeing equality of ownership of means of production of value. (Farms, Factories, etc.) Everything else stems from that 1st stage. If we agree that Soros and Zard are 1:1 equal under the sun and deserve fair ownership of the total product we all produce in the interconnected and interdependent world, then we can proceed further in this discussion - which form can this equality fill? Soft equality, hard equality, gradual equality? Communism, anarchism, socialism? If, on the other hand, the claim is that Zard is indeed inferior to Soros, and is not eligible to any form of equality with the almighty financier, then there isn't much left to discuss under current banner, we can just go on about our lives. You'll still remain a landowner of millions of acres of NZ fields filled with curly sheep you need to protect from ze commies, and I'll remain a greedy peasant stretching my hands towards your vast property from the underclasses.

I don't own the farms. If I was younger I woukd be willing to work the farm but my price would be $20 usd an hour and overtime rates in the weekend and after 40 hours.

You woukd have to pay me somikarvto a decent factory type job.

Under communism you would still have to pay me that amount or something similar eg nice house to willingly do it.

It's hard work you boil in summer, winters cold and wet.

Mates job at local port pays about $20 usd start ratean hour plus overtime rates driving a forklift. I would rather do that than work a farm tbh. So it's probably even higher.

 

[Gorbles]

High estimates put that at over 30M, less than half of high estimate for Mao. And that is in ~190 years. Communism racked up somewhere around 60-100M in seventy.

You were only talking about Lenin. Now it's Mao as well? Capitalism has plenty more examples buddy, but you've got to put the goalposts down first.

The point regardless is you should be horrified by both, instead of trying to mental gymnastic it into "one is better and therefore okay".

But nah, you just want to defend capitalism, makes sense. Your "alternative" was capitalism with polish after all.

 

[Zardnaar]

You were only talking about Lenin. Now it's Mao as well? Capitalism has plenty more examples buddy.

The point regardless is you should be horrified by both, instead of trying to mental gymnastic it into "one is better and therefore okay".

Depends if the famine is state engineered or not.

The communism ones were deliberate to export food to sell for industrial plant and specialists.

And they're a lot more recent than 19th century ones or earlier.

That's the key difference the famines were either deliberately engineered or gross incompetence due to political theory that won't work.

Can't think of any wester capitalist country killing 1/3rd of its population in 4 years like the Khmer Rouge regime. Hell that regime akes Hitlers regime look good.

Anyone here obesity say they would pick Pol Pots regime to live under vs Hitlers? How about North Korea or Nazi Germany? Anyone honestly say they would make that choice?

How bad do you have to be to make living under the Nazis an improvement? If you're Jewish pass on the Nazis anyone else might have to think it over.

 

[Gorbles]

And they're a lot more recent than 19th century ones or earlier.

If you want to try to dig up excuses, feel free. I'm under no obligation to take such apologism seriously, just like you (or I) don't when someone tries it on the behalf of the USSR or China.

Anyone here obesity say they would pick Pol Pots regime to live under vs Hitlers? How about North Korea or Nazi Germany? Anyone honestly say they would make that choice?

Dead is dead man, what do you want me to say?

And here's me, waiting for the inevitable defense of Nazi Germany, a country that enacted genocide on its own citizens and people across Europe

 

[Crezth]

Heck, they didn't even need to spin it. They only needed to repeat it and then stand there looking smug. 'Defund the police' sounds like we're advocating for no law enforcement or public safety of any kind, like we think The Purge would be a good idea. The defenders of the status quo had to be thrilled they were served such a big, fat pitch, right down the middle of the plate.*

No, I get what you're saying, it's just that I don't think that's really special. The conservatives have always just repeated exactly what the radicals have asked for and made a smug look at the camera. When the civil rights folks were clamoring for equality under the law, Buckley was smirking and winking and going on about how the world doesn't really work like that, and all jazz.

For my part I heard many slogans that weren't wholly and simply expressed as "defund the police" but for some reason that became an easy target to tunnel in on. That's always been the case, sadly.

High estimates put that at over 30M, less than half of high estimate for Mao. And that is in ~190 years. Communism racked up somewhere around 60-100M in seventy.

Absurd. Far more than 30 million Indians were beaten, unjustly imprisoned, enslaved, had their property taken, their communities annihilated, their history erased, their language abducted... I mean, if you want to roll for some good death estimates and line everyone up and declare the biggest estimates were the worst offenders, don't be surprised when A. the numbers always increase when the population of the world goes from some 500 mill tops to 7 billion, and B. the estimates of your guys always come out looking better because of how they counted. Suffice to say your estimates do not nearly tell the whole story and in 40 years of British rule alone there's a case to be made for 100 million deaths or more. And that's not even getting into the wealth appropriated on its own terms in that "190 years" but we could head to the British Museum and learn all about it.

The other thing is, since you like Mao so much, you might really want to look into how many people died in China period paragraph as a result of the civil war and the Japanese invasion. Did you know that between the years 1850 and 1864 somewhere between 20 and 30 million people in China were killed during the Taiping Rebellion? That's only 14 years and they're batting with the big boy casualty numbers, and that was decades before machine guns and 7.2 inch howitzers.

Wasn't that famine due to weather as well not deiberate government policy.

Official British policy held that famine was an inevitable consequence of bad Indian home economics, planning, and overbreeding, so I don't know if it's meaningful to try to draw a line between "intentionally" killed en masse or not in this case; besides which it was entirely intentional the decision to export food for profit rather than open the granaries and feed the starving. Moreover, the entire domination of the Indian continent was also a deliberate policy, so pick your poison.

 

[Sarin]

You were only talking about Lenin. Now it's Mao as well? Capitalism has plenty more examples buddy, but you've got to put the goalposts down first.

The point regardless is you should be horrified by both, instead of trying to mental gymnastic it into "one is better and therefore okay".

But nah, you just want to defend capitalism, makes sense. Your "alternative" was capitalism with polish after all.

I have talked about Lenin because he was the beginning. But when we're talking about overall damage that communism did, it would be wrong to exclude Mao, the world's biggest butcher.

You have brought the bodycount comparison into this discussion. I have never wrote that either side is okay. That's you trying to misinterpret me again. And, yet again, you just imagine me in a way that suits you and argue against that. Proving that you're the one here arguing in bad faith.

 

[Crezth]

I have talked about Lenin because he was the beginning. But when we're talking about overall damage that communism did, it would be wrong to exclude Mao, the world's biggest butcher.

You have brought the bodycount comparison into this discussion. I have never wrote that either side is okay. That's you trying to misinterpret me again. And, yet again, you just imagine me in a way that suits you and argue against that. Proving that you're the one here arguing in bad faith.

The comparison is totally invited when the point you're making is that communism killed those people. But you cannot account for the people capitalism has killed nor the excuses that both sides make for the deaths they caused. So what are you contributing here?

 

[Gorbles]

You have brought the bodycount comparison into this discussion.

No, that was you talking about Lenin actually. Here, if that helps.

But sure. "bad faith", whatever helps you.

 

[Lexicus]

9 million people per year die of malnutrition so contemporary global capitalism takes around 7 years to exceed the numbers people in this thread are making up and blaming on Mao