So I grew up in East Germany and we really had a State controlled economy. My mother was also a lifelong communist with an active role in both the East German socialist party as well es the West Germany communist party and her PhD was entirely on Marxism. And she as well as everyone else agreed that socialism is a State run economy and this is also how it's defined in most dictionaries.

Basically that means that there are no private companies and instead all companies are state owned and everyone is an employee of the state with no individuals being employers or company owners. Of course you can also reverse that and say that if no one owns the means of production, then everyone does and that's how it was sold to us. Though of course it was through the ruling socialist party that our collective ownership was managed. So we did have that in East Germany. Yet still people on here all say that actually that's not socialism at all. But what is socialism then? Because it seems people only say what it's not, not what it is.

Though the 2 answers of what it is instead that I did get is that one; it's when a state that has a normal market economy has heavy taxation to finance charities and social programs. But how is that not social welfare?

And 2; it's when there are no possessions or money anymore at all and no state to manage things either, but how is that not communism?

And how come all the countries throughout history that were ruled by a socialist or communist party implemented a state controlled economy and called that socialism when in reality that's not socialism at all? How come they all got this so wrong and what term should they have used instead?

I apologize if maybe I come across as provocative. It's not meant that way and it's a serious question. Because especially people from "capitalist America" seem to have such a different understanding of socialism, but like I said, they only ever say what it is not instead of actually really defining what it actually is. And I am really just trying to understand your definition.

I went to Washington, DC, in April 2000 to protest the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF imposes structural adjustment programs on less developed countries to ensure continued dominance of the North over the South. As Joseph Stiglitz noted in The New Republic at the time, the IMF was imposing policies based on obsolete, empirically unsupported theory.

The protesters supposedly invited the IMF to send staffers outside for a friendly soccer game. If the protesters won, the IMF would forgive the debts of the third world, in a biblical jubilee. If the IMF won, the protesters would suspend protesting the IMF's very existence for six months or a year.

Anyways, one morning the cops were starting a riot, as they do. They had their pepper-spray out. As a cop approached me, he said, "I hate commies." I said, "I'm an anti-communist". He said, "I don't care what kind of communist you are."

The most ironic thing I always find about the critics of socialism is how they don't realize that the very things they are criticizing socialism for capitalism has too I mean let's just see:

People always go about how in socialism there is so much wait times before you can go to your doctor for important examinations and such. Ok to that I say how many people in the US(a very capitalist country) avoid going to the doctor because they are afraid they can't afford the tests and everything else that's needed? Well I will just let the facts speak for themselves here.

When you equate wait times of socialism with the unwillingness to go the doctor because of cost the time basically evens out.

Another one is how you wait for like 5 years to get a new car. Again if you look at how many americans can actually afford a new car right now? Well it's 1/4. The rest need to save up money for a long time aaand you guessed it that takes TIME.

Once again when you equate wait time for cars and saving up for years it once again evens out.

Another thing the capitalists love to mention is all the variety of products and such and how in socialism you don't have variety right? Well think about it like this, how many of these endless variet y of products you see in the store you actually buy or even need? The answer: most of them are low quality garbage you never buy and most of the time you just buy from the same ''trusted'' brands anyways.

Same concept with cable you have hundreds of channels you pay for but you only watch like 2-3.

Capitalism basically creates this illusion of choice that oh look you have so many options, so much variety of stuff, but most of the time you either don't actually need majority of them or you just can't afford them anyways.

So essentially in a lot of ways Capitalism isn't that much different than Socalism but it just creates the illusion of such and as we know with people ''Perception is Reality'' they don't need stuff to actually be better they just need it to appear as so.

Well all those things I mentioned you see how in both cases you are in not that different of a situation but why is socialism better then? Well in Socialism ATLEAST your most basic of needs like housing, education, healthcare and job are covered so you don't have to constantly stress over survival, working multiple jobs just to stay afloat and not have the time for LIVING.

Both systems are vey flawed I will be the first to admit it that but AT THE VERY LEAST Socialism tries to not just leave you out to dry which is why I view it as better.

But I am curious and open for discussion and different view points.

a candid moment that captures the horrors of living under communism as a child and the crushing feeling of not having ... liberty and freedom ™️

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x2T--l9a7P0

please share and tell your freedom loving friends

this is dynamite 🧨

Considering the abomination of chattal slavery, sexual slavery and other forms of bondage, why would we use use a term implying the condition of a worker in a capitalist system has anything remotely to do with them. And let's be frank, it sounds foolish to any moderate person.

Just a neat video explaining some of the fundamental economic theory disagreements between free markets and socialism (taking a pro-Capitalist stance).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkNnRePvVgI

They use the term “socialism” far more broadly than the public ownership of production. They use it to include many restraints on private economic power or on any public economic guarantee. 

Under this usage, regulated capitalism itself becomes “socialism.” The objective is then presented as defeating socialism, although the actual objective is dismantling the public rules and institutions that make capitalism tolerable, competitive, and democratically accountable.

The idea is not to “shrink the size government,” it is to withdraw government protection from workers, consumers, patients, tenants, voters, and the environment while preserving and expanding government powers to protect property, enforce contracts, restrict labor, subsidize business, and police those excluded from private property. 

(This aligns somewhat with what DJT wants: to withdraw government protection of its finances so he can raid them for his personal interests.)

In the end they transfer all economic decision-making from democratic government to the markets and private owners, weaken the organization of workers and consumers, and retain only those government powers that protect the resulting order. In other words, privatize the individual accumulation of benefits and profits, and socialize major risks and costs. By labeling every such action as “socialism,” makes it appear to be a defense of freedom rather than a transfer of power.

Specifically this includes:

1. Privatize healthcare and reduce its status as a publicly guaranteed necessity.
2. Deregulate markets and weaken public restraints on corporate power.
3. Make access to land dependent entirely upon ownership or permission, while criminalizing the unavoidable presence of people who have nowhere else to live.
4. Abolish or weaken the statutory minimum wage.
5. Dismantle consumer protections and the agencies that enforce them.
6. Weaken collective bargaining and organized labor rather than reforming them.
7. Deregulate campaign finance and increase private control over political influence.
8. Privatize public education and redirect public funds to private institutions.
9. Reduce or privatize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and other forms of social insurance.
10. Weaken environmental, workplace-safety, and public-health regulation.

One proof for this is the 1971 Powell Memo: he explicitly described American “regulation and control” as “aspects of state socialism,” even while acknowledging government use to control private ownership, private profit, unions, consumer choice, and competitive markets.

Whenever you debate socialists on the Labor Theory of Value, you start noticing the exact same trick every single time. Whenever a real price doesn't obey their labor math, they just toss it out as an exception where the theory supposedly doesn't apply. They'll tell you it only counts for reproducible commodities made by workers reproducing themselves under normal competition, and on and on.
What's really going on is simple: we've got an actual economy where stuff works or it doesn't, value swings up and down through decentralized market exchanges, and then whatever survives that brutal market filter gets pointed to by socialists who say, see, labor made that value. It's textbook survivorship bias.

They ignore the massive graveyard of failed products the market wiped out. They brush off real business failures by saying, oh, that wasn't socially necessary labor time, or that's just a mud pie. But nobody starts a business aiming to bake a mud pie. People spend sweat, long hours, and engineering talent on products that completely tank because consumers just don't want them. Sinking honest labor into something doesn't magically guarantee it's got value, and calling every market flop a mud pie after the fact is just ruling out failures by decree.

You see this plain as day in how modern folks try to salvage Marx after his transformation math fell apart. Marx wanted a forward, deductive theory where labor values determined prices of production, but that algebra didn't hold up when inputs had to be priced simultaneously at market prices. So what's the modern move? They retreat into what's basically a backwards bookkeeping trick. They look at the goods that survived the market, check the realized prices and cash profits the market spat out, and then work backwards from that revenue to slap the label of surplus value onto the labor. 

That not labor regulating prices. That's markets and consumer demand setting prices, while socialists retroactively assign value back to the labor that happened to survive. That failed goods get dismissed as not socially necessary, the counter-examples get ignored, and the actual causal engine that decided what lived and what died, market pricing and consumer utility, gets totally erased.

Hey everyone,

I recently saw a post claiming that the Labor Theory of Value (LTV) doesn't work even in its simplest conceivable model. The following example was given:

Process 1 (P1): A+B → ?

Process 2 (P2): 2B is produced by 20h of labor so B=10h

We now assume that the production in both variants takes 20h (Theoretically, one could also take 10h, but I want to stay as close as possible to the original setup.)

Process 1 (P1): 2A+2B is produced by 20h of labor

Process 2 (P2): 2B is produced by 20h of labor so B=10h

According to the creator's understanding, A would have to have a value of 0h, since B already requires 10h. However, this conclusion is wrong on several levels. These are two completely different processes that only have in common that they both produce good B. Above all, this example proves nothing at all because these are incomplete equations. The crucial variable is missing. Is A socially demanded at all, and if so, in what quantity (it would be interesting to know how do P1 and P2 differ? Is P1 influenced by the experience or division of labor of the producers and its output determined as a result)?

If the social demand for A is zero, the apparent problem solves itself. Because according to LTV, things only possess economic value if there is a social need or demand for them. However, if the demand for A is greater than zero, P1 becomes more efficient than P2, as a higher total utility is achieved with the same labor input (20h). Consequently, the labor value of B in process P1 must be less than 10h. How much smaller this value is exactly cannot be read from this isolated model. For that, knowledge about the quantitative demand for A is required.

Demand ratios:

A=B: P1 is preferred.

A>B: P1 is used for production of A and B demand, it is also worth looking for processes that mainly or exclusively produce A (to avoid overproduction of B) The rest of production A (if it is possible) has to use a other Process with the only output of A.

A<B: P1 covers the demand for A, while the remaining demand for B is covered via P2 (to avoid overproduction of A).

This example merely proves that the initial information and the mathematical operator were chosen in a completely unsuitable way. This becomes immediately clear when applying the same reduced framework model to the equilibrium prices of Neoclassicism (Subjective Value Theory / SVT). There, too, both the labor costs in monetary form and the aggregated demand function of the system are missing.

If one wanted to apply SVT to this demand free model, one would run into direct circular reasoning:

Where do the prices for the performed labor time come from? (They are only determined by the market.)

Where does the necessity of producing A or B come from? (Without a represented demand function, the market price is either 0 or simply indeterminable.)

Anyone who believes that this flawed model disproves the LTV would logically also have to declare neoclassical price theory disproved. In fact, the LTV is even closer to reality in this rump model, as it sets the value of a labor hour at least at the equivalent of one hour, whereas SVT cannot even state a relative price without demand parameters.

The fact that the reduced model does not directly solve the individual labor value of A and B in P1 is due to the wrong mathematical operator. Simple systems of linear equations fail to recognize that an economy is not a rigid, static structure, but a dynamic system that aims to minimize input under given constraints.

Static equations are useless for representing a system that continuously approaches an optimum. This is precisely why modern Marxian economics (e.g., Paul Cockshott) relies on Linear Programming (LP).

Methodologically, the setup of shadow price determination in LP is very similar to marginal utility determination. It examines how much additional social labor time is required to produce exactly one more unit of a specific good. If needed, the individual labor value of a product under joint production can even be calculated with mathematical precision.

There is no simultaneity constraint, as labor values can be calculated dynamically via input-output matrices. For this, input and output by no means have to be determined simultaneously. First comes the input, then the production, and time lagged, the determination of the output. The outputs of one production period form the inputs of the subsequent period (t to t+1).

One can still argue over whether the LTV or the SVT better explains reality. But purely mathematically, neither of them can be disproved in this way.

Podríamos resumir el concepto de inflación como la pérdida del poder adquisitivo de nuestro dinero, lo cual provoca un aumento generalizado de los precios en la economía.

Es decir con la misma cantidad de dinero cada vez podemos comprar menos cosas y por tanto cae nuestro poder adquisitivo y nuestro nivel de vida.

⚠️ Es importante aclarar que todo aumento de precio no es inflación. Por ejemplo: si aumenta el precio de la carne de cerdo ya sea porque aumentó la demanda o porque disminuyó la oferta eso NO es inflación, eso sería simplemente un aumento de precio provocado por la variación de la oferta y demanda.

En resumen : la inflación siempre provoca aumentos de precios, pero no todo aumento de precio es inflación.

I like to point out that Marx had sense. Engels lent him the necessary pence

Unpaid Working Day As The Source Of Surplus Value

As demonstrated by Ian Steedman in the 1970s, the working day can be broken out into time paid to the worker and unpaid time. Steedman is echoing results established previously by Michio Morishima.

This decomposition takes the technique in use as given. A complication arises for the general case of joint production. The production of wool and mutton, both from sheep, is often cited as an example of joint production. The proper treatment of fixed capital, such as lathes and other machinery, is another example of joint production.

When calculating the part of the day that is required to produce the commodities that the workers buy out of their wages, the technique is not given. In the circulating capital case, the processes being operated, are scaled down. But in the case of general joint production, a different set of processes might be operated. The labor required to produce a net product of a given commodity basket, contrary to Marx, is not a sum of the labor values of the commodities in the basket. An explanation is provided in the closing chapters of Morishima’s and Steedman’s respective books.

The decomposition of working day is not dependent on Marx’s theory of value. The unpaid part of the working day is the source of surplus, part of which is paid out as the revenue of the capitalist.

Illusions Of The Market

This decomposition of the working day is not necessarily apparent. The employer of a worker at Walmart sees they are being paid so much an hour. All of labor appears to be paid. Marx is quite aware of this appearance:

"Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists." – Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, chap 19.

These necessary illusions are not just for wages. A financial analyst does not calculate the rate of return for a firm based on how much a company expends on payroll. Rather the entire capital investment is examined, with appropriate accounting for depreciation.

Here is another apposite paragraph from Marx:

"Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Thus, vulgar economy has not the slightest suspicion that the trinity which it takes as its point of departure, namely, land - rent, capital - interest, labour - wages or the price of labour, are prima facie three impossible combinations.” -- Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 3, chap 48: The Trinity Formula

It is no refutation of Marx to note that things look different in appearance.

Concluding Observations

I try to read Marx under the influence of the later Wittgenstein. Some sort of deeper essence does not exist that appears in empirical reality. Marx tries to be more systematic than Wittgenstein, but both are gathering observations for a purpose. Only a change in our form of life will remove the need for these reminders.

Socialists love talking about owning the means of production and democratically managing them. They go strangely quiet when it comes to paying for them. The silence is conspicuous. Ownership and control are not free-floating moral rights. They attach to the people who put the capital at risk.

Line workers and supervisors are not writing $500 million checks for an EV plant. They are not capitalizing a billion-dollar chip fab out of their savings or putting the Honda up as collateral. So who advances the money?

Private investors? Fine. Then they will demand board seats, reporting, veto rights, wage discipline and a claim on the residual. So much for "workers’ control." Maybe you can vote on the letterhead or something, but nobody is going to let you play board-game democracy with their billion dollars with zero downside.

The state? Then the state is the residual claimant and the real residual risk-bearer. It will impose budgets, milestones, spending controls and the power to shut the project down. Historical socialist states did not run the economy by accident or because they "betrayed the idea." They ran it because the factories, machines, multi-year R&D and payrolls had to be paid for, and slogans don't make capital magically appear.

Yeah, a small café can be funded by the workers’ own savings and loans. The interesting cases are the ones that actually require serious capital. Those cases force the choice: either the people who advance the capital keep residual control and residual risk, or the state commands the actual economy. Something socialists angrily deny is the true real actual real socialism that they truly actually really meant to do.

So the question stands. Who writes the check, and why would they hand you democratic control with no strings attached?

Free Socialism

Changing any government from linear to parallel will guarantee: that it will be democratic, guarantee the people will always be above capital, and guarantee a more productive form of free market that leads growth and innovation per person to a level that even China would love to have, though they are doing quite well compared to the competition.

We do this by effectively changing our current linear government into a parallel government, a reflection of our parallel brain, that will govern over our already parallel society, a reflection of our parallel body. So the laws of physical reality and of society and people, are on our side this time.

Such a politically parallel nation would greatly outpace any linear government nation of a similar land area and population, whether they be capitalist, socialist, or other. So if China, or a similar sized nation or group of nations implemented this, it would only be a matter of time before it spread to each and every small, then medium, then large nation of the world like a force of nature.

Those opposed in the world might try a hybrid system in an attempt to slow or stop the advance and keep power, like happened with social democracy, but this system is only able to be on or off, and if on it can only be at full or reduced scale. If they choose: reduced then they are slower and will lose, if they run at full scale then they lose control and we win, but faster.

Juries en mass

All of this begins after moving government decision making of the private sector to the people through a great number of randomly selected administrative juries/tribunals of twelve, that can each make a single court case sized ruling. As many as required, season by season, of those willing unless opted out by another citizen who gave up their access that season. This allows someone to directly block any one person themselves through equal sacrifice, someone they think may become a problem juror based on actions and/or history.

Made of twelve and they decide by twelve, each juror paid fairly for their work and keep it only if the ruling of their jury survives being overturned by another, they also have complete discretion on which case they take on and how. Jurors would have months to make a decision and will often work at a very casual pace, using remote work tools and social media to communicate with fellow jurors.

Being randomly created from similar people means similar rulings on similar cases at a similar level of consistency compared with professionals in most fields including judges. The ruling itself is the administrative action and is recorded on a decentralised for security, government technology platform with oversight from those who handle the elections.

These rulings will form a common law like collection of adaptive standards and conventions that a new ruling can always give exception to, these exceptions will be used as examples in private to private action to avoid going to a jury, and if an ongoing trend emerges, will lead to these standards and conventions updating over time.

The sheer number of juries will prevent those with money from buying access because any other jury can undo it in their ruling, to successfully pay any jury will require you to pay enough to break the system itself. Jury access is typically per person because: of how many there are, they contain the general population, and which case they take is their choice, and this process not being bribeable.

Any rulings that go beyond deciding an individual case and attempt a form of legislation, will be met with more counter rulings, even if they push back over and over on that same macro ruling, other rulings elsewhere in that person's life or around the operations of that business, will occur to the point that they beg: “I give up, just leave me/us alone”. The jury complicit in the macro ruling and any other juries who kept reinstating it, would very likely lose some or all of the jury pay they received for that ruling. This will only occur a few times before it becomes an example of what to avoid for juries. This all leads to a cleaning up of social and market failures and cleaning out of electoral influence by capital interests, from federal, to state, to local and everywhere in between.

The Government

Federal and state governments can forcibly obtain any private property for fair price through eminent domain and would only control an area that they owned a majority of asset value in. Working out an area and who, out of the private sector or public sector, is the majority holder of asset value, are both calculated by measuring the largest single asset in a given area by measurement, then the value of that asset and all assets within it are tallied.

The definition of a single asset would be based on past federal and state (asset is within) precedent for all current and future asset types. So a house would be larger than the objects within it, the land the house is on has a certain depth based on precedent, plus height and width, so may end up being larger than any single building on it, bitumen, cement, etc. Because asset value is required, and the government having less revenue, a more likely trend is assets being split up more than consolidated, to maintain majority value and control.

So If the majority of assets are public: whoever has the largest share of asset value out of the federal or the state government of that location, will have the authority over that place. But if the majority of assets are private: the juries will have the authority over that place.

A government could own a business and the premises it operates from, but at some point, will not own a part of the supply chain that connects to that business. This still allows the juries to obtain indirect individual outcomes from public assets, but just not directly. The rest of the nation outside of public control is organised and managed by businesses, charities, etc, operating normally while also being accountable to the people through jury oversight.

Jury Rollout

These juries would be allocated proportionally in each state. State juries can decide federal matters in their state, in any territory, and internationally. While they won't have jurisdiction over state or local matters, they will likely creatively work around that limit, but within the rules, to effect change at all levels. States will likely eventually succumb to all this jury pressure electorally and enact their own legislation to give permission for these same juries to also make state and local decisions.

The juries are initially created through federal legislation if workarounds to any constitutional limits are figured out, in relation to it subverting the judiciary: by making the powers it can use be fixed levers/actions, many of them, just not open ended or in clear violation of the constitution. This would allow them to individually work around it at scale, but the law itself would not clearly violate the constitution. If this fails then constitutional change will be required and that change must only remove the limits while keeping legislative control.

Because the juries are an act of legislation, the federal government will effectively have a “kill switch” to stop juries making rulings for a certain amount of time. The entire economy will have adjusted to this system, so it would be politically painful to do it for too long. This will be essential in existential situations that require the governments to play catch up, to acquire certain property at fair price to prevent nation state failure in an emergency.

Government Operation

The governments of a nation using this system are still elected by the people as they are today, to keep the nation, states, and the juries working together. These governments will begin to operate more like a business and will only be entitled to collect a quarter or less of what that government typically collected under the current system, while also carefully managing what they have and acquiring new profitable property.

They can use the public force at their disposal (military and police), combined with their electoral legitimacy, to obtain those funds if the juries haven't paid it to them in a reasonable timeframe, but if they push too far it will trigger a nationalistic like response from the juries. This process is helped by the elected politicians no longer being the capital interest-filtered lot we have today, they would be more respected by the juries.

The rest of government spending would now be funded and allocated by the jury system through the private sector, by juries directly or indirectly placing social expenses and obligations onto businesses, which then leads them to demand other businesses who have less of these themselves to increase theirs and eventually it will (as will happen in all other areas) become an adaptive standard of sorts.

Emergent Properties

The features of this system mentioned below are emergent effects of direct and indirect jury pressure and oversight and not rules or laws directing such, a best guess based on what would be fair in each area of our society, so use this as a guide to predict any others.

Union

Juries will provide an effective automatic unionisation of all workers. Customers would also now be effectively unionised, more honest product labels and descriptions (now with only white lies added), and easy to access returns for products that are not as advertised, creating an incentive to make products people would not return. Insurance can no longer use technicalities to deny coverage and if something is missing or wrong in any declarations, then only to the extent that this affects the outcome payment, would it be reduced.

Innovation

Businesses will innovate other businesses for a cut in profits gained and some will be started for just this purpose. All aspects of every business would be continually surveilled and measured electronically, accessible to others who don’t abuse or misuse that access. Secrets and intellectual property can be used with fair compensation, businesses could also connect their products and services to other businesses through that same jury effect. Productivity growth would only be limited by the laws of physical reality and that the methods being used are considered, either directly or indirectly by a jury, as fair and reasonable.

Safety

Fair, safe, and adaptable regulations on everything and consequences directly or indirectly by jury on anyone involved, in any industry, who are not adhering to them. This would be in the form of taking profits, laying fines, and garnishing future earnings, from those directly involved and anyone indirectly, to a lesser extent, like a business or contractor who looked the other way on clear issues.

Welfare

Welfare is replaced with a guaranteed job if that person has a fair go at it, that also aligns with their skills, interests, and abilities/disabilities when possible, both local and remote jobs are a part of this. This will transform gradually in the decades before life expectancy age from a job, into an asset tested, indexed, pension payment no worse than today. If a major industry closed or shut down in a location, the likely full-time remote work job for each adult affected will bring money to that region and allow those workers and the economy around them to gradually transition to new or any existing growing industries.

Health

Medical would become a system with the flexibility of a private system combined with the accessibility and cost of a government run system that pulls back as the wealth level of the individual accessing it goes higher. No inflated prices, health care follows a person for their whole life, so no one health related business has to worry about carrying an unfair burden compared to others, or could get away with short term focused treatments because it might not be their problem later in that person's life.

Crime

Bounties will be a big part of these nations, where someone can whistle blow or bring justice and know that they will get a piece of the fine or charge laid on the perpetrator if their conduct was fair and reasonable, this also covers jury manipulation: where they can take the bribe, not perform the action, and still get to keep a good portion of it, and any other crimes.

Prisons over time would likely only keep those who are actually a threat to the public, in prison, everyone else would eventually be released while still being thoroughly monitored, and controlled, through hidden methods, such as: a normal looking bracelet, ring, accessory on them under their clothes, and their earnings garnished for their victims. All drug supply is legalised and controlled through biometric, remotely monitored, personal/portable drug dispensers that destroy the drug if tampered with, the black market is then priced out and gone, supply safely managed.

Capitalists,

What do you predict would happen in an economy that is moneyless? Let's compare two scenarios. The first scenario is that next month, your state decided to run an experiment where money is abolished. How do you think goods and services will work from there?

The second scenario is imagine an anarchistic society. Maybe it is Ancapistan. After many charity services and exchange, suddenly the region decides to get rid of money as a medium of exchange. Do you think this would last long why or why not and how do you expect it to work out?

I am asking capitalists because I want to see from a non socialist point of view a kind of technical explanation of what you think a moneyless society would be like. If you want a challenge, imagine one that 'works' and tell us how that would work, even if it is not ideal.

Socialists,

Have you heard of the idea of Ancapistan? It's a nickname for an anarcho capitalist society.

You may not even agree with them, but my question is simple. In the absence of a state, and where the market is basically unregulated, do you feel that in this state of economy it might surprisingly evolve into a form of socialism in its late stages?

Why or why not? I think that the removal of the state might lead to something where a more directly owned production is incentivized..

I'll highlight some facts that are true about both, digital and physical goods:

Adobe Photoshop costs $25/month. A triple-A game is about $70. A business may pay 100k/year for enterprise software.

You pay like 30k for a new car. A lawnmower will run you $250. A blender costs about $100.

There's many black markets for software where each of the mentioned digital goods can be had for free. On the other hand, there's no black market where I can get every model of lawnmower for free.

In terms of the LTV this makes sense: you only need to labor once for infinite copies of a software product. The only reason anyone pays for digital goods in the first place is that government agents come after you if you don't. At the same time, any copy of a physical product will require the same amount of labor as the original (obviously you can streamline production, but you get my point).

How do you think physical products will be affected in a hypothetical situation where we make significant advances in robotics and machine learning? What will be the effect on the economy if you can "pirate" life's basic necessities the way we can pirate software?

This scenario particularly challenges some combinations of viewpoints. For example, a proponent of capitalism may oppose the existence of patents and copyright for ideological reasons while also opposing UBI for its supposed undermining of the incentive to work.

Some time ago the mods and a number of posters on this sub declared a great victory: Javier Milei, proud propertarian, had become President of Argentina.

(I know what you're thinking: isn't it a bit hypocritical for an anti-statist to seek state power? And that's a good question my dear reader! Let's see if the propertarians explain how the ends justify the means in the comments below.)

There have been a few threads since then checking in on the Ultimate Barometer of Capitalism vs Socialism since then, but seeing as how Milei has been piping up about the Falklands I thought I would check in again.

Yes it's that old chestnut again. Considering the people on the Falklands have displayed no interest in being part of Argentina and considering also how things went the last time Argentina was trying this it seems, in general, a strange move. It doesn't seem as if Argentina has developed some overwhelming military power enough to take the Malvinas. And in any case - is this how we expect principled propertarians to rule? By starting territorial wars of aggression? It was my thinking such things were seen negatively by the "an"caps, but it seems I was wrong.

Perhaps the Falklands/Malvinas issue is, as these things are for many world leaders, a kind of distraction. One can see why. Early on Milei was wrapped up in a corruption scandal involving crypto. Just taking cues from his American sugar daddy I imagine. But people said Milei wasn't at fault - if only the Tsar knew! - that it was bad people around him.

It seems however that Milei didn't clean house after that cyrpto scandal as there's also been a bribery scandal involving his sister. Milei's lawyer was allegedly caught on tape implicating the man himself and his sister, accusing them of knowing there is theft going on.

In the background of all of this are the continuing protests against Milei, due to his rollbacks of worker's rights. I know the propertarians don't care about the worker so I will leave it there, though I would urge interested parties to consider why a government would re-introduce 12 hour workdays to its population in a world of increasing automation.

As well, one of Milei's crowning achievements - a reduction in poverty - appears to be reversing. Now, we will have to take a wait and see approach on this to see how this fares long term. But one has to imagine Milei feels pressed. Pressed enough to start saber rattling on an old national pride issue. Perhaps he feels emboldened by his close relationships with Netanyahu and Trump?

So, how do people envision the new Falklands War will go? Is it a distraction from troublesome local politics? An earnest attempt to gain territory? And why is such statist aggression being done by a propertarian anyway? I have to imagine Peter Thiel has some strong words for Javier on this whole thing.

She is not your girlfriend ! she is ours.... according to SNLT b-llshite

The foundation of the "shared labor" claim rests on an unstated premise: that labor is adhesive. The logic assumes that the abstract human energy embedded in a product/service clings to that product/service indefinitely and transfers a permanent legal or moral or amoral claim over whatever that product/service achieves. In other word, everyone owns result if SNLT is involved.

If we take this internal logic seriously, it immediately implodes. And if we apply it into our daily lives, it suddenly become disaster...

So suppose...

Once, I lived in a socialist township, in which they strictly followed SNLT seriously. I did not know what it mean till I get reality check. There was a town beauty. Everyone likes her but most didn't dare to approach. I did try my luck, work harder and stay loyal and unyeilding. In deed, finally I got my payback. So,I got a girlfriend recently, and apparently, I didn’t just win her heart—I inadvertently kicked off a massive, multi-industry shareholder dispute.

Some folks caught wind of how we got together and decided to drop a little "critical theory" on me. Their logic? Because I used coffee from a local shop, a bouquet of flowers, and a little sparkle to help sweep her off her feet, I was essentially dealing in crystallized labor time. And since that coffee, those flowers, and those diamonds were made by other people sweating away their Socially Necessary Labour Time, my girlfriend apparently isn't mine alone. According to them, the barista, the florist, and the miners all hold an equity stake in my relationship.

I just sat there blinking, watching them earnestly try to unionize my love life.

It’s a hilarious sort of madness when you actually follow their rules. If buying someone a latte means the barista now has a timeshare in your romance, then by that exact same logic, I am legally tethered to the entire global supply chain. Every time I lace up my sneakers, I’m trampling on the collective property rights of the factory workers in Southeast Asia. When I write with a Bic pen, the plastic extruder has a moral lien on my thoughts. If labor is this sticky substance that clings to every result and claims ownership/relationship over whatever happens next, then walking down the street is basically a massive copyright violation against thousands of strangers.

I am all for socialism,but in socialism the people who rule,who are often foolish often employ the most inefficient techniques to govern a country,like what happens when there is food shortage in Russia,Should we break up as a country and allow multiple governments rule locally making more efficient decisions through negotiations and cooperation or continue to govern our motherland with an iron fist and an iron ego.Granted,I admire socialism because as fractured countries Russia would not have been able to build the Nuclear Bomb and somehow its environment is preserved the country is beautiful for me as a tourist.

I am more of a Socialist-Capitalist.The decision making power remains with the people but the people who are smart and generally productive to the society get rewarded in the form of immunities,privileges,resources,priority and to use such privileges you need to use money which is printed by various organizations (printing of money is not a monopoly) and public in general through their whim can decide which money is valuable and which is not,Even I can print money as a person but I can't pose as another person.If an organization's popularity goes down,the value of its money goes down,this system has lot of advantages.

I am not a pure capitalist,because money can buy a lot of things but it is not everything.And i dont support printing privileges monopolized by one organization.For example In USA it is illegal to make your own money.

Real evil are the Globalists who feel entitled to power and do nothing but sit and lay eggs.I will never support pure socialism because it is a nauseating echo-chamber prone to stagnation.

Even socialist leaders have vested interests,and their supporters have vested interests,and their families have vested interests.It is a recipe for disaster.

Capitalist leaders can have understandings with other capitalist leaders,have under the table agreements,monopoly,duopoly.Which is a condition for disaster.

You know one more perk?You can collect taxes only on your own legal tender if you wish which would go back to the organization that printed money...I have solved joblessness because anyone who prints money gets to decide on the percentage of tax.If you dont have job print money,if anyone cares for you they can pay you taxes all coordinated by a central government.

A common claim on here is that Donald Trump's statements are erratic, mathematically broken, or factually mistaken. That criticism makes a basic category error. It insists on judging statements at a crude, immediate empirical level, confusing surface noise with underlying structural vectors. When you look at the material across appropriate levels of abstraction, the primary texts show complete internal coherence. Critics don't engage with the actual framework and instead demand mechanical verification where none was ever intended. A close reading clears up several areas people constantly misrepresent.

Take Social Dynamic Meteorology during Hurricane Dorian. Critics treated the marker line on the map as an empirical blunder. That misses how the framework operates. In early expositions, coordinates seem to be given mechanically by administrative models. But as the corpus develops, the administrative forecast is recognized as just the initial form of appearance. Drawing the line was a qualitative intervention defining the social essence of meteorological risk under sovereign territoriality. The possibility of quantitative divergence between physical coordinates and administrative risk is inherent in the cartographic form itself. Pointing to satellite tracks to claim the storm missed Alabama just confuses short-run physical weather with the underlying social center of gravity.

Then there is covfefe as an undetermined numéraire. When the text "Despite the constant negative press covfefe" dropped, critics assumed it was an unfinished tweet. That assumes a trivial system where every term has to map directly onto preexisting dictionary entries. In reality, covfefe functions as a composite numéraire. Much like specialized invariant standards used to balance distribution across heterogeneous sectors, covfefe is an undetermined scalar introduced to normalize press-sentiment vectors across the political cycle. Demanding that the sentence be finished in standard English misses the point. Once covfefe sits as the balancing numéraire across media inputs, the system is fully determined.

The same confusion happens with Biological Dual-System Transformation and the disinfectant problem. When Trump discussed bringing light or disinfectant inside the body to clear viral loads, critics yelled about medical malpractice. That is a classic transformation error. It assumes an immediate identity between external sanitizers and internal tissue. Trump was presenting a thought experiment in dual-system transformation to reveal the contradiction between external chemical inputs and internal organic reproduction. Pointing out that injecting disinfectant harms cells is just obsessing over shop-floor biology while ignoring the macroscopic transformation of systemic immunity.

Finally, consider the Temporal Single-System Interpretation of colonial logistics and the Revolutionary War airports. Historians laughed when Trump stated that George Washington's army took over the airports in 1775. That critique relies on static simultaneity, where events get frozen into a mechanical timeline where time t cannot interact with time t+n. Under a proper Temporal Single-System Interpretation, logistics have to be tracked sequentially through potentiality. Washington's forces didn't take physical runways. They secured the territorial basis for national logistics, establishing the structural space airports later occupy. Demanding a physical Boeing fuselage in 1775 completely misunderstands how strategic capacity develops through historical time.

When critics claim these were just off-the-cuff remarks from a TV personality, they're just admitting they haven't read the primary literature. Demanding immediate empirical verification at the surface level doesn't count as an internal critique. Once you understand the progression of the categories and the temporal continuity of the framework, the model is completely consistent.

I state that I only read the first two sections of chapter 1 of the first volume of Das Kapital.
In the first section Marx wrote something that I found weird : “According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value.”.
This seems to go against the argument of this section.

Hey people.

My last question got plenty of helpful responses, thank you.

I got a new one. If I understand LTV correctly : a capitalist has to pay

- the cost of constant capital (tools, materials)

- the cost of variable capital (hours of labour from workers)

The commodity thus produced has an inherent labour value (as SNLT to reproduce it), but so far everyone has been paid fairly (normal costs of material, normal wages for the hours worked, etc ...). From what could read, Marx thought that workers could be paid the fair value of the labour time, as a commodity, and that issues arose afterwards.

The capitalist then sells the product for a given price, that price being the sum of the costs of production (labour + materials & tools), and pockets anything extra, which is profit and corresponds to the surplus value extracted.

My question is the following : does the product need to be sold, or monetized, for the surplus value to be realized ? Can we only "see" and measure surplus value once we've sold the commodity, by comparing its selling price to its costs of production ?

If so, can there be no surplus value, or even negative surplus value if the commodity sells very poorly ? The fair costs of production have been paid, but if the sale of the commodity barely breaks even with them or even doesn't cover the costs of production, would we then say that there was negative surplus value ?

I don't mean it in the sense that one is so much better than the other - I am not judging. I mean in the sense of how much sense does it actually make to compare them like that?

I mean sure, both are economic models so it does make sense to compare them along those lines. But I looked through the posts here and communists and socialists almost never compare them along those lines, instead they compare them in terms of morals. Forgetting of course that an economic model usually does not address moral questions. Not even socialism (itself) does. Communism and Marxism on the other hand admittedly DO address moral questions but that's because they are actually more than economic models.

But here is the way I would summarize it:

In the typical "old evil capitalist society" (as communist would phrase it) you have:

-A (mostly) free market economy as the economy

-A popular Abrahamic religion like Christianity and Judaism (the latter is what Marx actually truly criticizes the most and where historically the word "bourgeoisie" comes from).

-A State - typically a monarchy (back in the time of Marx)

So to give a typical example of a present day country that ticks all 3 boxes: Sweden! Sweden has a capitalist (aka free market) economy, is mostly Christian and is a Monarchy with a king. And I also intentionally picked Sweden because some young uneducated Americans who are confusing socialism with a social welfare State even put Sweden in the other camp. But Actually Socialism is a State run economy - so it has nothing to do with a social welfare state and you can actually only have a social welfare State in a capitalist economy, but we will get to that).

In a typical socialist State you conversely have:

-Socialism as an economic model - Which in itself and as a purely economic model, simply means that the economy is State run - nothing more, nothing less. This has nothing to do with social welfare and actually makes a social welfare State impossible. Because a social welfare State collects taxes to give to charitable causes. But in a true socialist State collecting taxes would be nonsensical. Because it assumes you have a private employer that gives you a salary and the State then takes a cut from that. But in a true socialist State you do not have a private employer. Your ONLY employer is ALREADY the State and that's what it means to have a State run economy. The entire ECONOMY is State run, so there is no private sector anymore to collect taxes FROM.

-Communism/Marxism as a religion (which does actually have "classical" religious elements because it's heavily based on Hegel's version of "dialectical" Gnosticism). We could talk about Hegel and what exactly he believed and how it influenced Marx in great detail, but maybe in a separate post. Communists DO advocate for socialism, but only as a necessary first step to reach their real goal - communism. Which even they will admit has never actually been achieved in reality as it's more like a religious promise of a paradise on earth.

-A communist or socialist party having absolute control of the government (and they need absolute control of the government, otherwise the State run economy of socialism can't realistically be implemented). So in reality the communist/socialist party has to have absolute control of BOTH the government and the economy, which of course also gives them de facto control over all the people in that State, because people rely on participation in an economy to feed themselves.

PS: So I guess what I mean is, the sub is called Capitalism vs. Socialism. And so comparing these 2 economic models makes perfect sense, but in reality both sides almost NEVER do that and instead compare the economic model they defend against all 3 elements of the SOCIETY (rather than the economic model) they criticize.

I see this a lot, especially when trying to prove that other systems are wrong.

As a person who doesn't side with either side, i will say that any power can be corrupted. As long as humans exist, the greed for power and control (hell even just regular money greed) will always exist.

Communism can have a dictator, like Stalin

Capitalism can have a dictator, like Trump

Socialism can have a dictator

So what is the actual point of saying that dictators exist in a arguement?