How To Make Socialism Work

[MiroIsBored]

Incoming wall of text gonk

God-Raped-Me

You know, Robin Hood robbed people like you, and there is a reason for it.

Funny you should mention Robin Hood, actually. Do you know why the poor were so poor in that story? Because of heavy taxation. You know what socialism is? Heavy taxation. People think socialism is just taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but the fact of the matter is that both rich and poor alike are taxed to pay for the "free benefits" of everyone. The rich can afford higher taxes... the poor cannot. (By the way, Robin Hood also targeted tax collectors rather than just rich people. If you recall, he was still loyal to the king and he himself came from a rich family.)

This is why I'm against socialism. I cannot afford higher taxes. You assume everyone that is against socialism is rich, which is completely false. My husband and I are barely getting by as it is.... if we had children, we would be in debt. If we had higher taxes on top of that, we'd be screwed just like everyone else.

When I was a teenager, I thought socialism was a good idea because I was fed up with my living situation... but the more I learned about how socialism actually works, the more put-off by it I was.

As for GTR, I admit that you have a point about clothing, but when I posted, I was considering only things needed for basic survival. For instance, if you were stranded on a deserted island, clothing would not be a priority (unless of course it was cold). Food, water, and shelter would. Additionally, the actual need for clothing would be dependent on the type of work you're doing and the climate. If someone is staying home and working with a sewing machine all day with a heater or central heating, they will not need clothing for survival. And people that live in warmer parts of the globe do not get to -30 degrees... some of them don't even get as low as 32 degrees (except under extreme weather conditions).

As for entertainment, just because people lived with it does not mean that they need it to survive. Going back to the deserted island scenario, entertainment would not be a priority. One would be focusing on survival. I think you added entertainment because you would like to be entertained and live comfortably rather than it actually being a basic human need.

On top of that, what people find to be "entertaining" is subjective and would thus be hard to sanction in a "fair" manner. For instance, Billy might find reading books to be entertaining, whereas John finds a Gamestation 1080 to be entertaining. The Gamestation alone is more expensive than Billy's books, but to add on to that, John also needs a TV and video games in order to utilize his Gamestation. Billy would only need maybe a book shelf and a book mark. You could try to "make things equal" by giving Billy a Gamestation and whatnot, but he isn't entertained by such a thing and thus it would be wasted effort to provide it for him. Even something as basic as TV service does not entertain everyone. Everyone simply has different tastes.

People can find things to entertain themselves with when they are bored. My dad grew up thinking throwing old cans into the street was entertaining... others thought "kick the can" was entertaining. You don't need someone to provide that for you. As a kid, my siblings and I would play tag, or take things laying around our house to rearrange a bedroom into a "haunted house" for entertainment. "Back in the day", adults would play games like charades for entertainment, or simply talk. I guess asking people to entertain themselves is too "capitalist" though.

On the subject of "not needed" businesses.... who determines what is and isn't needed? Something that is perceived as "not needed" could still wind up making things more efficient later on down the line. For instance, when the computer was invented, it was completely impractical and slow and would have been scrapped for being "not needed" in such a society. However, because it was invented in the first place, people were able to build on that idea and eventually we ended up with the internet, modern PC, and laptops... though "not needed", they help get certain tasks done more efficiently.

When I mentioned things being shut down and scaled back for things such as farming, I was not saying that everyone would go to farming. Farming was merely an example. Farming also does not just mean growing more crops... rather there would be more people to help plant, nurture, and harvest them. Other industries people would be pooled into would be manufacturing of "needed" items (which could be any number of things depending on who you ask), distribution of said items, social work to determine who gets how much of what, and enforcement (the people who will kill you for being lazy), just to name a few.

And with no government, who is it that would determine that everyone has to work? Who is going to kill the lazy people? Who gets to decide what "lazy" is? Who decides what "entertainment" is? Who decides what is "needed"? Who evaluates families to make sure they get "what is needed"? You may not call them a government, but that's what they are, and in your ideal society, they have complete control over you.

Capitalism is considered "the big bad guy" because people believe it simply means, "screw the little guy and praise the rich man", which isn't true. The idea behind capitalism is similar to that of karma.... you perform an action and you either suffer or enjoy the result of that action. You cannot expect to enjoy if you did not work for that enjoyment. One reason people came to America was capitalism... they knew they could potentially end up starving on the street, but they wanted to have the opportunity to be more and do more by means of starting businesses and inventing new things.

I'm not going to lie and claim that capitalism is flawless to try to make myself look better, but I personally find it to be better because gives more freedom. People might feel like they're stuck being poor because the rich can just go through college and get a high paying job without any effort (like Obama rofl ), but there is still opportunity out there. Not every rich person started out rich... some of the people that are rich had humble beginnings and worked to get where they are now... and I don't see anything wrong with someone using the money that they earned to secure a comfortable future for their family.

Yes, some people swindle their way into richness and I'm just as disgusted by these people as you are, but that does not automatically make capitalism bad. It simply means that those people are bad, and if the market was allowed to work like it's supposed to, such people would go out of business and fall because of their bad practices. What we currently have in the United States isn't even pure capitalism because the government provides subsidies to certain corporations and industries which is a socialistic-like practice.

Also, you don't need to break down every paragraph and respond to each individual sentence. If the answer to the next sentence was simply "see above", that goes to show you could have just quoted the two together.  

[God-Raped-Me]

God damn you people are stupid as s**t!

THERE IS NO MONEY IN A SOCIALIST WORLD!! You can't be taxed if there is nothing to ******** tax! You work and he works and you both reap all the benefits!

Yes Robin Hood was loyal to the king, Richard NOT John who was the one taxing the people , because Richard was fair to his people and wasn't taxing the hell out of everyone. I seriously doubt you know the story of Robin Hood. He robbed from the rich and the people who were taxing unfairly, and gave it to the people who NEEDED the money.

Also again there is NO MONEY therefore it doesn't matter what anything costs. It doesn't matter what entertainment COSTS, you would work, and then you would get the form of entertainment that you enjoy. If you want more forms of entertainment, you would do more work. You do just the bare minimum and you get the bare minimum. In a socialist world the people would want to do more because they will actually reap the benefits from it. Not this, I worked 60 hours a week and made all this money just to pay off my ******** bills and have nothing left over. Single parents wouldn't have to get s**t loads of jobs just to support their family because raising your children would be good enough.

However you don't seem to be able to grasp the idea of there being no money in a world, so this whole thing seems pointless. You NEED the idea of money, we don't.

 

[MiroIsBored]

I know the story of Robin Hood about as well as you do, actually (though there are many versions of it). I am aware that Robin Hood was loyal to the fair king and not the king that taxed them, but the reason I mentioned his loyalty to the king is because the king was still rich. You act like all rich people are evil and Robin Hood was just against all rich people and not the unfair taxing. Robin did not continue to steal when Richard came back even though there were still poor people out there.

Additionally, you act like money is evil. True, money can corrupt a person's mind, but the money itself isn't evil... it's people's perception of it that's evil. Originally people started out with bartering... which I think is a good system, however, the problem that came with bartering is that you would not always have what the other person wants. For instance, if one person made socks and wanted to get a bag of wheat, they would offer their socks in exchange for the wheat. However, if the wheat farmer did not want socks, the sock maker would have to find someone that does who also has something that they can trade the wheat farmer so they can get their wheat. Money was established as a constant that you could use to trade for anything. So if you made socks, you could trade them for money and use money to buy wheat instead of going through a run around.

Money also established a means to prove that you did a certain amount of work. So if a man were to fix a leaky roof in someone's house, he could get paid money so he could buy food for his family. Of course with barter, the person with the leaky roof could have also paid in food, but they might not have had any food to spare at that moment, or they only had certain non-edible goods that they could trade, which the man would have had to try to trade for food. Barter works, but money makes things easier and thus more efficient.

As for things not costing anything, to actually make things fair, you would still need to do more work for items that require more work to produce. Even without a money system, this puts a "cost" on items in the form of labor. To just label all forms of entertainment as "equal" means you are devaluing the labor of the people that produced those forms of entertainment.

The general way pricing works with a money system is to add the cost of the raw materials plus how much labor was used to assemble the item, then companies add extra on the end so they get a profit. If you take the profit off the end, it still takes a certain amount of work to produce and acquire the raw materials and assemble them. It takes more effort and materials to make a Gamestation 1080 than it takes to make a book. If John and Billy did the same amount of work and John got the Gamestation while Billy got the book, this would not be fair as the book does not require as much materials and effort to make. Even taking in the intellectual effort of writing a book into account, it does not add up to being equal to a Gamestation, as the Gamestation also requires intellectual effort to make it work in the first place.

If John and Billy had both performed enough work to afford the Gamestation but Billy only got a book, where does his extra work effort go? There can be no rich or poor.... everyone is equal. So he cannot use that to acquire himself more food because he does not need extra food and that would give him an advantage to others. He cannot use it to buy a house because he does not need a house as he is a bachelor and all bachelors live in single bedroom apartments. To live in anything else as a bachelor would be "unfair". He can use it for extra entertainment, but all he wanted was some books. So Billy's extra effort just disappears. How is that fair?  

[God-Raped-Me]

There's not such thing as "Evil", just corrupt. Money causes corruption. In a society there would be no corruption, no theft, no greed.

I'm going to try and explain this again because for some stupid reason you just cant seem to understand this concept. 2 people work at their jobs, whatever jobs it doesn't ******** matter. now for doing their job they get whatever entertainment of their choice. Now here is the part where you have to understand that one item is WORTH more or less depending on the person. Person A wants an Xbox, where as person B wants a knitting kit. Money wise and Xbox is more yes, HOWEVER the knitting kit means just as much to person B and an Xbox to person A. Now lets say person B wants an Xbox down the road, all they have to do is make sure they keep doing their job. You see nothing in that type of society COSTS anything. If you want something, do your job and you get what you want. If you do extra work you can get extra things sooner.

Imagine a world where you don't need to pay for any sort of health care, cosmetic or life saving. Where if you want a degree in something, all you have to do is start learning. If you want to be a stay at home parent, you don't have to worry about a job on top of that.

The only thing money does for us is create jealousy. The people who have more of it seem to think they're somehow better than everyone else.

If you STILL can't grasp the concept, you never will.

 

[MiroIsBored]

as I said before, when I was a teenager, I liked the idea of socialism and communism (the money-less society you are talking about is communism. Socialism tries to "make things equal" by using taxes to "rob from the rich and give to the poor", so there is still money), but I learned more about how they work and discovered why people kept saying they were bad. On the surface it sounds fair and "ideal"... but when you dig deeper into how it is enforced and how it works, it doesn't have that "sunshine and rainbows" appeal anymore. I understand what you're talking about and why you support it more than you realize. I'm trying to explain to you why it isn't as "fair" as you think it is.

To a person into knitting, the knitting kit may hold the same value to them as a person who likes xbox values their xbox.... but the work it requires to make a knitting kit is far less than the work it takes to make an xbox. This is something that you do not seem to want to acknowledge.

There may not be a price tag, but that does not take away the simple fact that one requires more labor and raw materials to produce than the other... plus the demand for one will be higher (as there are not as many people that enjoy knitting as there are those that play xbox) and so the workers who produce the xbox will be under more strain to meet the 'needs' of the public than those that produce the knitting kits. In the society in which you described, a person making knitting kits can get an xbox without having to do as much work (or go through as much stress) as the xbox maker. In other words, the knitting kit maker is getting more than they are giving in terms of work performed.

Knowing that, what is the point in being an xbox maker if you can get an xbox by making knitting kits? What's the point in doing anything difficult, stressful, or undesirable if you can get anything you want from just doing your job, no matter how easy that job is? This is why pay differences exist.... people (generally) get paid more for harder work (although, I realize this is not always the case stare ).

Additionally, simply getting rid of money will not eliminate jealousy, nor will it eliminate greed and theft. There would still be people that want that xbox without having to work for it. People will also still find ways to up their "status", like they do in prison, for example. There is no money in prison, so they use things like cigarettes as currency. The more cigarettes you have, the richer you are. In a society in which all you can get extra is entertainment, people will build up a stock pile of "entertainment" and use that as currency or just to make themselves appear "richer" than everyone else by having a lot of it.

Also, if just staying at home and being a parent is good enough to get everything paid for, what is to stop people from having kids just so they don't have to work? People already do that for welfare... what would stop them in your society? I agree that people should be able to stay at home and raise their own children instead of having to go out and get a job, but to get everything free just for having a kid leaves the system open to abuse. Trying to discern the difference between someone being lazy and someone just trying to be a good mother will not always be so easy.

Corruption, jealousy, greed.... these are all basic human flaws. Money did not create these traits... they are already there. I think you blame money because you are having so much problems due to money, but it is not the money's fault... nor is it even capitalism's fault as (like I said before) what we currently have in the US isn't even capitalism.

Actual capitalism would not involve the government taking away between 20% to 40% of your income in taxes and social security, nor does it involve a central bank manipulating the market and artificially inflating currency and living costs at a rate in which wages cannot keep up. This is why you have people struggling to get by despite working so many hours. The current system that we have in place is the government telling you that they know how to use your money better than you do... which is closer to socialism than capitalism. -This- is the system that you are complaining about... it is not capitalism and it is not a system I support as it is obviously no good.  

[lazycommie]

*Bows to miro's masterful skill at covering this stuff*  

[Zombie1429]

God-Raped-Me

God damn you people are stupid as s**t!

THERE IS NO MONEY IN A SOCIALIST WORLD!! You can't be taxed if there is nothing to ******** tax! You work and he works and you both reap all the benefits!

Milo has already raised some of questions I would be concerned about but i'd like to expand on them and make another point. I don't understand how large co-operative operations would really work under such a simplistic system. I'm refering to large scale production for things we take forgranted at the moment, computers are a good example, I don't want to imagine how many agreements are organised just to have a pc designed, produced and delivered.

There is even more ambiguity involved when you consider organisations and people who don't physically produce anything. This doesn't even include docotors, the evidence of their contribution would be obvious, i'm thinking more about what we'd consider to be the arts. Would you give someone food and shelter so he could study philosophy or history when you are producing something more tangible?

One final question. In a socialist world as you imagine it, what benefits would you be offering?  

[God-Raped-Me]

Miro, I'm done arguing this with you. I know there is no way you can understand something like this happening because of how you think money, people and the government work. We're not having money problems at all. We're in a huge house, this winter I was able to buy a new car, and I have kids I can afford to feed, clothe and provide entertainment for. I just dislike how out government lies to us and tries to cover it up, and I believe that in a system like the one we're talking about the government wouldn't be able to lie as easily.

All the people who are doing the work to get a computer going are all working and therefore are doing their part in society, so I don't understand where the confusion is here, maybe I just misread that part. Just like someone who is researching is working. I figure they would have evaluations to make sure they're actually doing what they say they are.

What benefits do you need? You'll have any health problem taken care of the best it can be, regardless of if it's physical or mental, dental or chiropractic. You need a vehicle to get to your job, you have one and it will be taken care of when you need it. You want to hold a party for you and your friends or family you don't have to worry about having enough food or entertainment. People who want to get married wouldn't have to wait until they had enough money, and they would be able to have the wedding of their dreams because they wouldn't have to worry about cost. You would get any benefits you want as long as you did your part. Education... man education, imagine how many people who want to learn but don't have the money to would be able to learn! That right there is a HUGE reason why I'm all for a no money system.

Also to the lazyness issue, You would ship them out of your country and ban them from ever coming back. People who want to live in your country would have to sign an agreement to the working/gaining conditions. GTR's Solution is killing them, but that's a bit extreme for me.

Obviously there's a ton of things that would have to be carefully taken care of, and I just don't know what all of that would be because I'm not into social studies nor am I a part of the government in anyway. I also realize that something like this will never happen because there are too many greedy people in the world. Too many people who want to show off the fact that they make more money than their neighbour.

 

[Zombie1429]

The main point I was trying to make was that currency attaches a value to something and that makes the running of society much simpler when you think of macro systems. No one has argued that capital cannot be used to create or maintain an unfair advantage for some other others.

I gave the example of the computer production and what i'm confused about is how this would continue on a much more localised scale like the one you've talked about, it is true that they are 'doing their part for society' as you said but by removing a simple system for compensating work (i.e. money) you've complicated things immeasurably. Basically, if someones role in something is more distant or less obvious than someone elses (i.e. the guy who designs the car compared to the mechanic who fixes it for you) then what assurances do you have that they will be compensated adequately for their work? It would not be long until a reductionist point of view sets in (why should we give food to p.e. teachers when we can just tell the kids to run around in a field? etc.).

I think more emphasis needs to be placed in welfare but deny that money can be done away with. I also find these ideas for dangerous for people who do not totally conform to a society that places so much value on what you can offer. This does not mean the lazy in all cases (and I also deny that society would become paralysed with idle wasters) but includes the elderly, the disabled, the young and to a lesser extent stay at home mothers and other 'non-productive' persons.

Few issues with your deportation policy too, one of which is where to put your deportees. No country will accept people that you are getting rid of for not working, thats moronic. The second point is how you come to decide when someone is 'lazy', you could set up an organization to monitor production just like you suggested with scientists and thinkers (didn't come up with that cure you were looking for? Too bad for you, off to Siberia you go!) but I don't think i'd have the good grace to give them a lift to work and then throw them a party so they could spend time judging how contributive I am to society.  

[lazycommie]

God-Raped-Me

Miro, I'm done arguing this with you. I know there is no way you can understand something like this happening because of how you think money, people and the government work. We're not having money problems at all. We're in a huge house, this winter I was able to buy a new car, and I have kids I can afford to feed, clothe and provide entertainment for. I just dislike how out government lies to us and tries to cover it up, and I believe that in a system like the one we're talking about the government wouldn't be able to lie as easily.

All the people who are doing the work to get a computer going are all working and therefore are doing their part in society, so I don't understand where the confusion is here, maybe I just misread that part. Just like someone who is researching is working. I figure they would have evaluations to make sure they're actually doing what they say they are.

What benefits do you need? You'll have any health problem taken care of the best it can be, regardless of if it's physical or mental, dental or chiropractic. You need a vehicle to get to your job, you have one and it will be taken care of when you need it. You want to hold a party for you and your friends or family you don't have to worry about having enough food or entertainment. People who want to get married wouldn't have to wait until they had enough money, and they would be able to have the wedding of their dreams because they wouldn't have to worry about cost. You would get any benefits you want as long as you did your part. Education... man education, imagine how many people who want to learn but don't have the money to would be able to learn! That right there is a HUGE reason why I'm all for a no money system.

Also to the lazyness issue, You would ship them out of your country and ban them from ever coming back. People who want to live in your country would have to sign an agreement to the working/gaining conditions. GTR's Solution is killing them, but that's a bit extreme for me.

Obviously there's a ton of things that would have to be carefully taken care of, and I just don't know what all of that would be because I'm not into social studies nor am I a part of the government in anyway. I also realize that something like this will never happen because there are too many greedy people in the world. Too many people who want to show off the fact that they make more money than their neighbour.

Actually, in the system you put forth, it would be much easier for government to lie to people, as they wind up with "all the power" because they are responsible for feeding/clothing/etc. everyone. If someone doesn't do what they want, they'd just deny them any food or shelter, consigning them to a slow death. Socialism fails not because of "greed"(it could be argued that socialism is fueled by greed even moreso than cappitalism, because people want "something for nothing"), but because of laziness and even more importantly, lust for power. When you give people the ability to give you everything, they also end up powerful enough to take away everything, and they will.

There cannot be a "no money system", because eventually some form of barter will spring up due to government being utterly incapable of doing anything right, followed by a monetary system because barter is not a particularly efficient method of trade.