Communist Failures

[ygolo]

For whatever reason, I want to understand your question and I do not.

Is "procurement" a country's indigenous resources and "trading" is obtaining non-indigenous resources from another country?

By resources, I mean any goods or services available, either natural or man-made, either imported or indigenous.

By procurement, I mean and individual realizing "I need X" asking some system for it, and going through all the steps the system requires to get X.

By trading, I mean two parties, A and B, are involved. A has resource X, and B has resource Y. They agree to swap X for Y, and follow through on that agreement.

 

[Haight]

The crux of the issue is under what conditions does the mix of procurement vs. trading for allocating resources make the most sense?

I don't believe that a non-mixed allocation of resources can even exist.

Okay, I received a "Like" for that, so I will assume I'm now understanding the question.

It makes the most sense when there is a need, as opposed to a "want," by the Public or Private sector of a particular country, for resources that are not indigenous to that country.

 

[ygolo]

I agree with you here. I think the mixed economy/social democracy that everybody in the first world is used to, is in fact, what most people agree is the most workable system. Left/right positioning is just how much of what mix one thinks is optimal. Left wingers want more government involvement/regulation in more things, right wingers tend to want less.

PS> I refer to primarily economic issues/basic infrastructure issues. Kitchen table type issues as it were. Which are the important ones, or should be. Alas, social issues tend to be emotional hot buttons and tend to get a high priority when they should not.

When you get into 'social' lifestyle/personal issues like abortion rights, gay rights, what sins are allowed (i.e. legal vs illegal drugs, prostitution, and the like.) left/right tends to get turned upside down, with right wingers wanting more government control, left wingers wanting less. Of course, religion gets mixed up in these issues too, which causes more chaos.

I think, coming for the same country, that is my general understanding of left/right too.

But Al Gore famously championed something populist, had sensible regulation, and spurred a lot of economic activity despite being an ardent environmentalist.

There was a time when permissionless innovation and net neutrality were largely Democratic Party-championed issues.

 

[ceecee]

The crux of the issue is under what conditions does the mix of procurement vs. trading for allocating resources make the most sense?

I don't believe that a non-mixed allocation of resources can even exist.

I was just replying to Dr. Cringe back there, not debating the issues that have and will continue to arise in the US due to improper allocation of resources/lack of oversight and regulation.

 

[ceecee]

I think, coming for the same country, that is my general understanding of left/right too.

But Al Gore famously championed something populist, had sensible regulation, and spurred a lot of economic activity despite being an ardent environmentalist.

There was a time when permissionless innovation and net neutrality were largely Democratic Party-championed issues.

I'm sorry, what? Net Neutrality is a Dem championed issue - the Dem majority FCC restored those rules in April - Republicans were the only people fighting them (and telecom). Permissionless innovation wasn't destroyed by Democrats, I can post the entire House Antitrust Subcommittee report if you want to read it but there is more in this link.

The end of permissionless innovation

Darrell West argues that in the House Antitrust Subcommittee report, policymakers are finally catching up to the technology they regulate.

www.brookings.edu

 

[ygolo]

I'm sorry, what? Net Neutrality is a Dem championed issue - the Dem majority FCC restored those rules in April - Republicans were the only people fighting them (and telecom). Permissionless innovation wasn't destroyed by Democrats, I can post the entire House Antitrust Subcommittee report if you want to read it but there is more in this link.

The end of permissionless innovation

Darrell West argues that in the House Antitrust Subcommittee report, policymakers are finally catching up to the technology they regulate.

www.brookings.edu

I know about that.

It was my belief that the Democratic party still believes in permissionless innovation, and I would like to believe it will still be the case.

But just like when Richard Spencer and the white supremacists were taking over the Republican party in 2015, there are many on the Left (self-described leftists) who are rallying hard to regulate equations.

Unlike the fringe groups in the case of the Right Wing movement, there are main stream figures like Jane Fonda and Mark Hamill moving to regulate people using equations.

I have been sounding the alarm constantly:

Supporting Little Tech is the Practical Way to Deal with Big Tech

www.typologycentral.com

I don't want to rehash the whole thing.

During the Rwandan genocide, the comedians played a big role in dehumanizing people as "cockroaches" to allow that to happen. During the cultural evolution, the movement like to demonize the "stinking old ninth" to remove scientists and to starve farmers because they were perceived to have "surpluses."

The same thing is happening with the tech industry and AI. I went in detail (with numbers and budgets) how this bill is doing the same thing to me (far from a tech billionaire). Even the likes of Jon Stewart have alluded to tech people not being human.

I realize it can feel like yelling into the wind.

If I wasn't working on an AI project to get my family out of debt, I would not have even noticed the issue, myself (even as a tech person).

I'd like to think the starving of my family is unintentional. But in detail, I laid out how this bill is doing that--before the people above put in support (not that anyone would pay attention to our little forum, but I needed to vent).

 

[ygolo]

I'll call it "on-size-fits-all"-ism for the allocation of resources.

The call to get angry and get a "small part of the solution" in place by writing your congressman, who would then, I suppose, by some miracle get appropriate laws passed so that sometime in the next decade, there can be a partial change towards a completely untested solution proposal just doesn't seem that promising to me.

I'm glad Jon Oliver is raising awareness of the problem, but that particular solution suggestion is about the worst thing I've ever heard. I directly experienced the issues mentioned, and it kinda makes me mad that such a simplistic thing is put forward as a solution.

 

[Lark]

I agree with you here. I think the mixed economy/social democracy that everybody in the first world is used to, is in fact, what most people agree is the most workable system. Left/right positioning is just how much of what mix one thinks is optimal. Left wingers want more government involvement/regulation in more things, right wingers tend to want less.

PS> I refer to primarily economic issues/basic infrastructure issues. Kitchen table type issues as it were. Which are the important ones, or should be. Alas, social issues tend to be emotional hot buttons and tend to get a high priority when they should not.

When you get into 'social' lifestyle/personal issues like abortion rights, gay rights, what sins are allowed (i.e. legal vs illegal drugs, prostitution, and the like.) left/right tends to get turned upside down, with right wingers wanting more government control, left wingers wanting less. Of course, religion gets mixed up in these issues too, which causes more chaos.

I dont agree with that definition of left and right to be honest, its very american, and reads very like the whole "gummit bad, business good" which is the same was Animal Farm's "two legs bad, four legs good".

Any state intervention or regulation there ever has been in history has only been to stabilize the economy, never to transform it, whatever way its been thought of or sold at the time, I could conceive of a private but socially responsible authority doing the same, I have a feeling it's necessary if you are going to get rid of the "big government" because its necessary. Even if it wasnt at a time, it is today. A lot of basics are reliant upon it, like dealing with bad weather let alone foreign aggression, domestic terrorists etc.

Plus there are plenty of socialists who dont think the state is a means for introducing or furthering their goals, that's always been the way, despite all the right wing propaganda to the contrary (which a lot of left wings bought too readily too).

Its no mistake that Dunning-Kruger was applied to readily to the Navy, just about as big a government enterprise as you're going to find, and Dunning-Kruger aligns pretty well with Hayek's calculation debate, because both of them deal with scale, monopoly, in some sense a strain of absolutism.

Religion/Irreligion or reducing public / social policy to matters of personal and private morality is dumb, its never the less, as you put it a hot button issue, one of the best ways of describing it I've heard is "dog whistle" politics, ironically applied by the right wing to the left, when the right wing is great at it too.

 

[SensEye]

I dont agree with that definition of left and right to be honest, its very american, and reads very like the whole "gummit bad, business good" which is the same was Animal Farm's "two legs bad, four legs good".

Well, that is certainly not what I was implying. I was trying to say some government is good, some business is good, OTOH, too much government is bad and too much unregulated business is bad.

There's a point on the curve there that is probably the most efficient, and I would argue the left/right (as we generally think of it) is usually just a difference of opinion on where that point falls. This doesn't include extreme approaches like Marxism or Libertarianism, but I don't really know any real people who actually believe in those approaches.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

If this election goes the way I'm afraid that it will, I'd call that a capitalist failure. The media has played a very strong role in making Trump a palatable figure for America. They do this because they make money by doing so. They're not in the business of delivering truth or anything like that, although they liked to position themselves as courageous defenders of freedom when he was in office. This is despite the fact that they were the ones who helped put them there. Consider SNL having Trump host twice and then NBC lauding themselves for speaking "truth to power" after the fact by bringing in Alec Baldwin to lampoon. It's a similar story with J.D. Vance and that stupid Hillbilly Elegy book that they all fawned over on the media circuit.

Maybe I've watched too many Noam Chomsky documentaries but I think the media is partly the problem, because the media is owned by corporations that want to make a profit, and it turns out that investigating and revealing the truth isn't that powerful.

Because of greed then, we may lose whatever remaining semblance of Democratic control remains. It could get so much worse than that, too. Are people aware that in other countries there are also cases of capitalism overthrowing democracy?

 

[ygolo]

If this election goes the way I'm afraid that it will, I'd call that a capitalist failure.

I set that one up.

-isms

 

[Virtual ghost]

Because of greed then, we may lose whatever remaining semblance of Democratic control remains. It could get so much worse than that, too. Are people aware that in other countries there are also cases of capitalism overthrowing democracy?

This isn't really about Capitalism. This is the case of oligarchy trying to muddy the democracy, Capitalism is just the means how to do that. This is like a knife: you can do some serious harm with it or you can use it as a tool to feed more people. The problem is actually in primitive and backward understanding of Capitalism. The problem that typical American doesn't really understand since they never tried more advanced version of it (which exist in various other developed countries). This is exactly why I said that operating system in US is out of date. Windows 95 just wouldn't do the job anymore.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This isn't really about Capitalism. This is the case of oligarchy trying to muddy the democracy, Capitalism is just the means how to do that. This is like a knife: you can do some serious harm with it or you can use it as a tool to feed more people. The problem is actually in primitive and backward understanding of Capitalism. The problem that typical American doesn't really understand since they never tried more advanced version of it (which exist in various other developed countries). This is exactly why I said that operating system in US is out of date. Windows 95 just wouldn't do the job anymore.

I would argue that American capitalism, with the fondness of it's politicians for "laissez-faire" capitalism is a purer form of capitalism.

What exists in other places is a more restrained form of capitalism, unless they are even more laissez-faire. I'm not saying that European are communists. It's just that Americans tend to think of capitalism the way a Soviet subject might think of communism.

You're not really supposed to think of alternatives to it or even constraints to it.

 

[The Cat]

We live in a deceptive oligarchy ime.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I would argue that American capitalism, with the fondness of it's politicians for "laissez-faire" capitalism is a purer form of capitalism.

What exists in other places is a more restrained form of capitalism, unless they are even more laissez-faire. I'm not saying that European are communists. It's just that Americans tend to think of capitalism the way a Soviet subject might think of communism.

You're not really supposed to think of alternatives to it or even constraints to it.

And this is why your side in US never gets anything done on the most basic level. Since this is pure self defeatist logic. It is perhaps more pure in a sense that it is more basic and unrefined ... but that is it. The key to success is exactly in changing the definitions.

Plus speaking of Europe: It seems that Europe will be going into large remake of it's economic model because of new global realities. What means that the system should get even more refined and redefined in order to hit desired targets. What means among other things even stronger unification". What is the fundamental remake of the system, what means certain changes in how our capitalism works (in short, we are digging in before it is too late). Therefore I just don't agree with this mindset that nothing can ever change. For me that is just mental blockade, not a fact.

 

[The Cat]

And this is why your side in US never gets anything done on the most basic level. Since this is pure self defeatist logic. It is perhaps more pure in a sense that it is more basic and unrefined ... but that is it. The key to success is exactly in changing the definitions.

Plus speaking of Europe: It seems that Europe will be going into large remake of it's economic model because of new global realities. What means that the system should get even more refined and redefined in order to hit desired targets. What means among other things even stronger unification". What is the fundamental remake of the system, what means certain changes in how our capitalism works (in short, we are digging in before it is too late). Therefore I just don't agree with this mindset that nothing can ever change. For me that is just mental blockade, not a fact.

Agreed.
They do put good money into making one the other here. Which is why I suspect so many get trapped in that.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It is perhaps more pure in a sense that it is more basic and unrefined ... but that is it. The key to success is exactly in changing the definitions.

Plus speaking of Europe: It seems that Europe will be going into large remake of it's economic model because of new global realities. What means that the system should get even more refined and redefined in order to hit desired targets. What means among other things even stronger unification". What is the fundamental remake of the system, what means certain changes in how our capitalism works (in short, we are digging in before it is too late). Therefore I just don't agree with this mindset that nothing can ever change. For me that is just mental blockade, not a fact.

And this is why your side in US never gets anything done on the most basic level. Since this is pure self defeatist logic. It is perhaps more pure in a sense that it is more basic and unrefined ... but that is it. The key to success is exactly in changing the definitions.

I won't argue that I'm defeatist, but unlike a lot of other people, I don't see a Trump victory as game over. I think it's extremely undesirable, and I hope it doesn't happen, but I don't few things as narrowly as that.

I am frustrated because I hear people telling me that things can be changed. I'd like to know how they can be changed in this sociopolitical climate. That's where the goods are.

The first problem is that the reason all our systems of government are dysfunctional is a feature, not a bug. Many of the Founding Fathers were worried about the common people having too much of a voice. They also wanted to make it really difficult to change things. Those are the reasond we have the Electoral College, and it was intended to play a much larger role than it does now. You can read this in the Federalist Papers, it's all there. (One reasons why I've always hated conspiracy theorists, there are so many conspiracies out in the open, where they wrote down and talked about what they wanted to do, and did it. They never acknowledge the conspiracies that actually exist.)

This could be overcome, but the problem is that too many people aren't even aware of what the situation is. Primarily, they don't understand who actually has power. People need to know about the facts and the objective truths involved in the situation. I don't know how to do this, but it should also be done in a way that's fun, and contains levity to offset the gravity of the message. It should appeal to aesthetic and emotional sensibilities. I think it could be done, but I'm not sure how you do it in such a fragmented landscape.

I once considered the possibility of doing this with religion, but religion might blow up the world, so I'll pass on that.

I don't actually agree that this is a center-right country, but maybe that's because I've read Thomas Frank. (Whatever, the author of What's the Matter With Kansas? still makes sense to me.) The problem is that so many of our center-left politicians are fairly timid and lame, if they aren't simply being corrupt. And so many liberal Americans fundamentally misunderstand the relationship they have with their politicians. It's not Star Wars. They're not Jedi Knights with a blue lightsaber facing off against a Republican Sith with a red lightsaber. Politicians are fundamentally transactional in nature. I actually don't have a problem with this, but too many people don't realize that politicans won't support anything unless they think votes might depend on it. Politicians aren't progressive leaders, they follow.

People don't realize the truth of their situation and that is where the problem lies. If we can solve that problem, we can move on to the next steps.

 

[Virtual ghost]

It might be defeatism, but it's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is a political system designed





I won't argue that I'm defeatist, but unlike a lot of other people, I don't see a Trump victory as game over. I think it's extremely undesirable, and I hope it doesn't happen, but I don't few things as narrowly as that.

I am frustrated because I hear people telling me that things can be changed. I'd like to know how they can be changed in this sociopolitical climate. That's where the goods are.

The first problem is that the reason all our systems of government are dysfunctional is a feature, not a bug. Many of the Founding Fathers were worried about the common people having too much of a voice. They also wanted to make it really difficult to change things. Those are the reasond we have the Electoral College, and it was intended to play a much larger role than it does now. You can read this in the Federalist Papers, it's all there. (One reasons why I've always hated conspiracy theorists, there are so many conspiracies out in the open, where they wrote down and talked about what they wanted to do, and did it. They never acknowledge the conspiracies that actually exist.)

This could be overcome, but the problem is that too many people aren't even aware of what the situation is. Primarily, they don't understand who actually has power. People need to know about the facts and the objective truths involved in the situation. I don't know how to do this, but it should also be done in a way that's fun, and contains levity to offset the gravity of the message. It should appeal to aesthetic and emotional sensibilities. I think it could be done, but I'm not sure how you do it in such a fragmented landscape.

I once considered the possibility of doing this with religion, but religion might blow up the world, so I'll pass on that.

I don't actually agree that this is a center-right country, but maybe that's because I've read Thomas Frank. (Whatever, he still makes sense to me.) The problem is that so many of our center-left politicians are fairly timid and lame, if they aren't simply being corrupt. And so many liberal Smericans fundamentally misunderstand the relationship they have with their politicians. It's not Star Wars. They're not Jedi Knights with a blue lightsaber facing off against a Republicans Sith with a red lightsaber. Politicians are fundamentally transactional in nature. I actually don't have a problem with this, but too many people don't realize that politicans won't support anything unless they think votes might depend on it. Politicians aren't progressive leaders, they follow.

People don't realize the truth of their situation and that is where the problem lies. If we can solve that problem, we can move on to the next steps.

I never promised that things can be changed easily, it is just that I don't think that is fundamentally impossible. In my book this probably wouldn't change without evident and large generational changes.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I never promised that things can be changed easily, it is just that I don't think that is fundamentally impossible. In my book this probably wouldn't change without evident and large generational changes.

I don't think it's impossible either. The biggest barrier is that people need to look at the world in a different way.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I don't think it's impossible either. The biggest barrier is that people need to look at the world in a different way.

This is exactly why I told you that change of definitions is the key. Therefore it is best that things are called for what they are, what would be the "upgrading of Capitalism". So that it is more like the one in other developed nations. That would fix various issues and the country would remain loyal to it's history and law of the land. Since at the end of day this is fixing of various details, not the overhaul of the entire system and starting from scratch.