Anytime I have discussions about communism it’s always sort of the same thing…
Yeah, well, no country gas ever done communism right, that’s why it has all failed, but REAL communism is awesome, you just have to do it such and so and it will be great!
Well yeah, sure, but then can’t we say the same about capitalism?
Well yeah, capitalism has caused suffering but thats ibly because no country has done it right. Real capitalism is awesome, you just have to do it such and so and it’ll be great!
For my part, I think capitalism is the way, but different from what we do now. To clarify, I think we both want the same destination, just different routes.
I want capitalism with a number of hard restrictions and restraint. At its core, capitalism is about freedom to trade. Unbound, this will lead to where we are now with monopolies and abuse coming out of the whazoo. Yet, capitalism’s power is that it can generate economic prosperity better than any other system.
So how about this?
We go for capitalism but:
companies cannot grow bigger than (pulling numbers out of butt) say 1000 employees. You reach that, you can’t hire anymore.
Companies cannot have a worth over a billion dollars. Any worth over that goes straight to taxes until that limit is reached
Any person cannot have a net worth of over 10 million dollars. Anything over that goes 100% to taxes
A billion dollar company therefore must have at least 100 shareholders
With these rules ( and a few more) you’ll get rid of the too big to fail companies, you get rid of all the monopolies and powerful companies and powerful people. You get not one trillion dollar company, you get a million million dollar companies instead that compete with eachother
Meanwhile Governments get enormous tax revenues which they can then spend on a ginormous socialist network. Free healthcare (including mental, Dental, eyes, everything), free education for all, free minimal food, free housing, free public transport, hell we could even do universal income.
This is the other thing that ma y people kinda overlook: you need your system to generate enough “wealth” for everyone to be able to live and enjoy living. You need enough food, you need enough entertainment. The USSR, for example, wasn’t known for any of these things
I’d like to clarify off the bat that I’m not suited to advocate communism, specifically, as the solution to our problems. I wanted to point out the distinction between economical and political government systems. But I do think we need to clarify this point:
At its core, capitalism is about freedom to trade.
Capitalism is about private ownership of goods and infrastructure required to produce other things, allowing the owner to charge others for the privilege of using them. Once you own enough, you’ll be able to live off of the work of others without having to raise a finger yourself.
These aren’t synonymous: You can have free trade without paying vampires for having money. If companies were owned by worker collectives, for example, they could still trade freely.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is the accumulation of capital. All those rules you propose are restrictions on that, as in: no longer pure capitalism. If the solution to the problems of capitalism is to curtail the accumulation of capital, perhaps we need a different name for the resulting system.
I don’t think limiting a company’s upper number of employees is a great idea. Part of the prosperity-generating mechanism is the economy of scale, which would be curtailed. I see the issue of monopolies (which I believe you’re trying to tackle here), but I think they can and should be combated differently. More on that below.
I would also get rid of shareholders entirely. Being rich should not entitle you to getting paid money for nothing, and that’s exactly what shareholders are. Worse yet, so long as that mechanism of “be rich -> get richer” exists, the system will be under threat by actors seeking to bend its rules by manipulating lawmakers and judges.
If companies need initial funds to get off the ground, those funds shouldn’t come from private investors. Universal Basic Income would go a long way to reduce the hurdle already, because you need to worry less about being able to survive and can focus on building something to thrive instead. You could more easily bring other people on board with your project, because they don’t need to worry about the company going under and leaving them without a livelihood.
Public credits, to be repaid through taxes on revenue, could help you acquire the tools and resources you need. Profit could be split between the workers, which allows them to afford luxuries beyond the necessities of survival. That desire for luxuries will still encourage profitability.
If the funding comes from the public, that would make the public the owners of these companies (presumably through representatives, but I’ll abbreviate that here). That eliminates the cycle of incentives wherein the shareholders will reward the CEO for making them more money at the expense of employees and customers, because employees and customers are shareholders too.
If the public owns companies, monopolies through acquisitions become a matter not of who has the most money, but whether the public decides to fuse two companies it owns.
Likewise, the public could regulate the actions of monopolistic companies to avoid the detrimental effects of monopolies. They could also split companies to provide redundancies in case of disaster. They could fund competitors. They could make and break monopolies as is warranted.
And if the company goes under? Well, its assets belonged to the public, any money it “wasted” was spent on goods and services the public produced and UBI keeps the people out of poverty so they have a chance to build something new. That particular project was a dud, so you learn and try again.
Heavy taxes on for higher brackets would offset attempts to enrich yourself. I’m not convinced I’d go 100% as you propose, but 90% isn’t unprecedented. Wealth Tax also needs to be a thing, to encourage re-investing your gains (that is: buying the things other people produce so they can afford luxuries too). A well-funded and -run IRS to ensure those taxes are properly complied with will also be necessary.
The one thing all this hinges on, that any system hinges on, is the government / management. As soon as you put people in charge of decisions, you place trust in them. There need to be mechanisms that effectively hold these decisionmakers accountable to the general public. That is the most crucial part of any system that should serve the people. That is the most vulnerable part, which conservatives have been attacking and eroding for decades.
No matter what we want to accomplish, no matter where our aims may diverge down the line, we must work together to ensure public accountability first and foremost.
Yeah but…
Anytime I have discussions about communism it’s always sort of the same thing…
Well yeah, sure, but then can’t we say the same about capitalism?
For my part, I think capitalism is the way, but different from what we do now. To clarify, I think we both want the same destination, just different routes.
I want capitalism with a number of hard restrictions and restraint. At its core, capitalism is about freedom to trade. Unbound, this will lead to where we are now with monopolies and abuse coming out of the whazoo. Yet, capitalism’s power is that it can generate economic prosperity better than any other system.
So how about this?
We go for capitalism but:
companies cannot grow bigger than (pulling numbers out of butt) say 1000 employees. You reach that, you can’t hire anymore.
Companies cannot have a worth over a billion dollars. Any worth over that goes straight to taxes until that limit is reached
Any person cannot have a net worth of over 10 million dollars. Anything over that goes 100% to taxes
A billion dollar company therefore must have at least 100 shareholders
With these rules ( and a few more) you’ll get rid of the too big to fail companies, you get rid of all the monopolies and powerful companies and powerful people. You get not one trillion dollar company, you get a million million dollar companies instead that compete with eachother
Meanwhile Governments get enormous tax revenues which they can then spend on a ginormous socialist network. Free healthcare (including mental, Dental, eyes, everything), free education for all, free minimal food, free housing, free public transport, hell we could even do universal income.
This is the other thing that ma y people kinda overlook: you need your system to generate enough “wealth” for everyone to be able to live and enjoy living. You need enough food, you need enough entertainment. The USSR, for example, wasn’t known for any of these things
I’d like to clarify off the bat that I’m not suited to advocate communism, specifically, as the solution to our problems. I wanted to point out the distinction between economical and political government systems. But I do think we need to clarify this point:
Capitalism is about private ownership of goods and infrastructure required to produce other things, allowing the owner to charge others for the privilege of using them. Once you own enough, you’ll be able to live off of the work of others without having to raise a finger yourself.
These aren’t synonymous: You can have free trade without paying vampires for having money. If companies were owned by worker collectives, for example, they could still trade freely.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is the accumulation of capital. All those rules you propose are restrictions on that, as in: no longer pure capitalism. If the solution to the problems of capitalism is to curtail the accumulation of capital, perhaps we need a different name for the resulting system.
I don’t think limiting a company’s upper number of employees is a great idea. Part of the prosperity-generating mechanism is the economy of scale, which would be curtailed. I see the issue of monopolies (which I believe you’re trying to tackle here), but I think they can and should be combated differently. More on that below.
I would also get rid of shareholders entirely. Being rich should not entitle you to getting paid money for nothing, and that’s exactly what shareholders are. Worse yet, so long as that mechanism of “be rich -> get richer” exists, the system will be under threat by actors seeking to bend its rules by manipulating lawmakers and judges.
If companies need initial funds to get off the ground, those funds shouldn’t come from private investors. Universal Basic Income would go a long way to reduce the hurdle already, because you need to worry less about being able to survive and can focus on building something to thrive instead. You could more easily bring other people on board with your project, because they don’t need to worry about the company going under and leaving them without a livelihood.
Public credits, to be repaid through taxes on revenue, could help you acquire the tools and resources you need. Profit could be split between the workers, which allows them to afford luxuries beyond the necessities of survival. That desire for luxuries will still encourage profitability.
If the funding comes from the public, that would make the public the owners of these companies (presumably through representatives, but I’ll abbreviate that here). That eliminates the cycle of incentives wherein the shareholders will reward the CEO for making them more money at the expense of employees and customers, because employees and customers are shareholders too.
If the public owns companies, monopolies through acquisitions become a matter not of who has the most money, but whether the public decides to fuse two companies it owns.
Likewise, the public could regulate the actions of monopolistic companies to avoid the detrimental effects of monopolies. They could also split companies to provide redundancies in case of disaster. They could fund competitors. They could make and break monopolies as is warranted.
And if the company goes under? Well, its assets belonged to the public, any money it “wasted” was spent on goods and services the public produced and UBI keeps the people out of poverty so they have a chance to build something new. That particular project was a dud, so you learn and try again.
Heavy taxes on for higher brackets would offset attempts to enrich yourself. I’m not convinced I’d go 100% as you propose, but 90% isn’t unprecedented. Wealth Tax also needs to be a thing, to encourage re-investing your gains (that is: buying the things other people produce so they can afford luxuries too). A well-funded and -run IRS to ensure those taxes are properly complied with will also be necessary.
The one thing all this hinges on, that any system hinges on, is the government / management. As soon as you put people in charge of decisions, you place trust in them. There need to be mechanisms that effectively hold these decisionmakers accountable to the general public. That is the most crucial part of any system that should serve the people. That is the most vulnerable part, which conservatives have been attacking and eroding for decades.
No matter what we want to accomplish, no matter where our aims may diverge down the line, we must work together to ensure public accountability first and foremost.