tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post6733944713990189045..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: More on socialist economicsLarry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-81155277298959312772009-01-10T11:24:00.000-07:002009-01-10T11:24:00.000-07:00First, looking at it again (I've read it a few tim...<I>First, looking at it again (I've read it a few times) I wonder, how is being efficient "slacking"?</I><BR/><BR/>Doing something in less time is not slacking. Claiming more hours than is actually true is slacking.<BR/><BR/>The idea under socialism is that the <I>community</I> — not the producer — should benefit as the socially necessary labor time to produce a commodity decreases: economic efficiency should be socialized, not privatized.<BR/><BR/><I>I also wonder how you handle private property if there is no inheritence - how do you stop that?</I><BR/><BR/>Inheritance taxes and direct expropriation of the estate at death.<BR/><BR/><I>If wealth is mostly in your home and you can't pass it on when you die, do you throw kids out of their parents' homes when their parents die?</I><BR/><BR/>Under socialism, even in the early stages, most people would not own their homes; they would, rather, more-or-less rent their homes from the government. The difference between socialist rent and capitalist rent is that a) surplus value is taken from the renter only under <I>political</I> control (and only to keep housing in line with population) and b) renters would have more political rights.<BR/><BR/>See my post on <A HREF="" REL="nofollow">socialized housing</A> for more detail.<BR/><BR/><I>The other thing I wonder is, how big are these committees to allocate resources? Practically speaking, once you have a certain number of people, you can't all get together and decide things. Either you break into smaller groups or you have representatives, but once you have reps, then individuals give up power to them, and isn't that what you want to avoid?</I><BR/><BR/>I'll go into this aspect in more detail when I talk about the political aspect of socialism.<BR/><BR/>One important feature of the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune" REL="nofollow">Paris Commune</A> was that representatives were subject to immediate arbitrary recall.<BR/><BR/><I>And my last question for now is, isn't this expecting an awful lot? At least 30% of the people on your committee will be the same people who think Palin is the second coming - the RWA's - unless you have extermination camps for RWAs, what do you do about them?</I><BR/><BR/>No extermination camps. The best we can do is try to get the economic side (and some broader aspects of the social and psychological sides) of the dialectic on a better track and let social evolution work itself out over time.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-68696259801051409292009-01-10T09:42:00.000-07:002009-01-10T09:42:00.000-07:00There's so much here, it will probably take severa...There's so much here, it will probably take several comments to respond to it, but might as well start somewhere. <BR/><BR/>First, looking at it again (I've read it a few times) I wonder, how is being efficient "slacking"? I mean, if one person makes a shoe in an hour and another person takes five hours, it just seems odd to me to call the first person a slacker. Both did the same amount of work. One just is more efficient. <BR/><BR/>I also wonder how you handle private property if there is no inheritence - how do you stop that? In this country, the majority of the wealth for the non-rich is in a person's home. But not all homes are alike. Some people have nice big houses, some people live in crappy trailers. If wealth is mostly in your home and you can't pass it on when you die, do you throw kids out of their parents' homes when their parents die? Can kids in general not live in the same home lived in by their parents? If they can, isn't that inheritence? <BR/><BR/>The other thing I wonder is, how big are these committees to allocate resources? Practically speaking, once you have a certain number of people, you can't all get together and decide things. Either you break into smaller groups or you have representatives, but once you have reps, then individuals give up power to them, and isn't that what you want to avoid?<BR/><BR/>What do you do if you disagree with the committee's choices? What if the committee plays favorites (and it seems like some will)? <BR/><BR/>And my last question for now is, isn't this expecting an awful lot? At least 30% of the people on your committee will be the same people who think Palin is the second coming - the RWA's - unless you have extermination camps for RWAs, what do you do about them?DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.com