Is socialism now desirable?

[Cornfed]

By socialism I mean government ownership of the means of production. If we get past the lolbertarian bullshit, the argument for markets is incentives, innovation and Darwinism. But does that really apply any more?

Consider the case of natural monopolies. These are desirable in many cases. Take the roads. You only want one network rather than taking up the entire surface of the country with competing networks, you want the entire network to link up and you want everyone to be able to use the network. While the roads could in principle be owned by a private company regulated in a certain way, what would be the point? If would have no competition so none of the benefits of the market would apply and there would be the possibility of regulatory capture. It would be better for the government to continue to own the roads.

Now consider that on the current trajectory lots of things will become a natural monopoly. For example, Amazon may dominate all regular shopping. This is obviously desirable in any number of ways. But then shouldn’t the government run it for the same reasons as the roads. Same with Google etc.

There are other desirabilities to socialism. The extreme gap between rich and poor, essentially arising because some are in a position to take advantage of our shared technological heritage of hundreds of years while others are shut out, could be mitigated. The people made unemployable due to automation could be employed by the government to do stuff that is useful on a societal basis but not useful on a transactional basis.

This is not to say that people would be disallowed from starting private businesses and making lots of profits, but once those businesses had reached a size where a natural monopoly was desirable the government would take them over and generously compensate their founders.

Thoughts?

[fschmidt]

Right, put a coalition of Jews and sociopaths in complete control of the means of production. Is that your utopia? I think Russia already tried that.

[Cornfed]

Right, put a coalition of Jews and sociopaths in complete control of the means of production. Is that your utopia? I think Russia already tried that.

We already have a coalition of Jews and sociopaths in complete control of the means of production, so no change there. Obviously any positive change is predicated on the Jews and psychos being exterminated, but what then? As to Russia, that was 100 years ago, and socialism then was for the purpose of the Jews & psychos centralising everything ASAP and not necessarily the most efficient system. Now with technological changes and the fact that things are centralised anyway, perhaps the optimal solution has changed.

[Moretorque]

I think it was Jefferson who said the whole entire system would need to be re-thought in the future of about say 200 years. Give the Jews credit because think in terms of plotting the future every day, a future distopia that is....

I saw a pod-cast with a women who stated in a African language of a certain dialect in South Africa there was no word for tomorrow in that vocabulary so that goes to tell you just how far ahead the Blackman thinks, just say'in for the Corny....

[flowerthief00]

You really should not want government running everything. Ideally you want government running as little as possible because government is maddeningly inefficient and wasteful.

That said, the current track we're on--where the earth is being ravished by insatiatable demand for more stuff--is problematic to say the least, so some kind of change is needed....

[Cornfed]

You really should not want government running everything. Ideally you want government running as little as possible because government is maddeningly inefficient and wasteful.

That said, the current track we're on--where the earth is being ravished by insatiatable demand for more stuff--is problematic to say the least, so some kind of change is needed....

But aren't crony capitalist systems even worse beyond a certain scale? Take the American healthcare system. It is inefficient by design, with inferior coverage at about twice the per capita cost of comparable socialist systems.

[Moretorque]

You really should not want government running everything. Ideally you want government running as little as possible because government is maddeningly inefficient and wasteful.

That said, the current track we're on--where the earth is being ravished by insatiatable demand for more stuff--is problematic to say the least, so some kind of change is needed....

But aren't crony capitalist systems even worse beyond a certain scale? Take the American healthcare system. It is inefficient by design, with inferior coverage at about twice the per capita cost of comparable socialist systems.

Hey dope head you ought to be able to figure out legalized counterfeiting is the cause of most of this and socialism calls for fake money..... Just like a pig to be only as smart as a pig can be...

[flowerthief00]

But aren't crony capitalist systems even worse beyond a certain scale? Take the American healthcare system. It is inefficient by design, with inferior coverage at about twice the per capita cost of comparable socialist systems.

It can't be helped that capitalism requires some government regulation to ensure that markets remain free from monopolies and cronyism. I wouldn't dare argue against that.

American healthcare...
Yes, the American system has gotten so bad that socialist nations are actually doing it better. Although I won't deny that a socialized system couldn't be desirable in some ways, I will say however that at least in other ways when you examine them, socialized healthcare illustrates exactly what I said--government bureaucracy creating inefficiency. Long wait times, for instance. In the American system, horrendous though it is in the cost department, you can at least be seen by a doctor in a timely manner compared to in socialized systems.

Another point not made frequently enough is that America is a very large and diverse nation unlike all those socialist nations it is always being compared to! We have single states that are the size of those nations. So we have to stay wary of "one size fits all" policies in regards to whatever approach we take in reform. We can't just copy everything Sweden or Norway does.

Which is, in fact, another example of how too much government can be detrimental. There is a tendency to forget the benefits of federalism over centralized control. It might be that the United States of America has outlived its usefulness as a monolith and would be better off broken into smaller pieces, though of course there would be negatives with that too.