Communism sucks and free market is the way to go

[deleted_user0]

I think that I'm getting close to a point where I'm literally physically incapable of reading a whole book, at least in a reasonable amount of time

Untermensch

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[Laurence Drake]

mah, the discussion has ended. rip

incog has spoken, let's all go home folks.

[spanky4ever]

I will repost this - cos it did not get any response. I seriously think that if there where much more cooperatives - the economy could be more stabel and sustainable:

Marxism is a critique of capitalism, and as far as I can see, it has never been put to life in a big scale in any countries - YET. I am talking about the bottom up empowerment of the workers - that the workers own the business as a cooperative. Communism is a top down system, where the bureaucrats make all the decisions as in a dictatorship. I guess the communists in China and Sovjetunion just took Marxism 3 steps to far.
Imagine that the tools, the fabrics, the big corporations being ruled by the workers - and that the workers where choosing their own management. If they are not happy with the management, they get to pick new leaders? That the wages where set by the workers, in a way that the profits of the buisness where devised more equally among them, and put in to new investment for the good of the company (and not the CEO or the stockholders). Today most stockholders have never set their food in the businesses they own.

Cooperative businesses are community-owned private enterprises that combine consumers with owners, and buyers with sellers in a democratic governance structure. Cooperatives solve the general economic problem of under or over production, business uncertainty, and excessive costs. Cooperatives address market failure and fill gaps that other private businesses ignore; such as: provision of rural electricity or other utilities in sparsely populated areas, provision of affordable healthy and organic foods; and access to affordable credit and banking services, to affordable housing, to quality affordable child or elder care, to markets for culturally sensitive goods and arts.


Cooperative businesses have lower failure rates than traditional corporations and small businesses, after the first year of startup, and after 5 years in business. About 10% of cooperatives fail after the first year while 60-80% of traditional businesses fail after the first year. After 5 years, 90% of cooperatives are still in business, while only 3 - 5% of traditional businesses are still operating after 5 years.

https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... Qsy_w7zjoA

[momuuu]

I think that I'm getting close to a point where I'm literally physically incapable of reading a whole book, at least in a reasonable amount of time

Im not able to not read books in one setting, which completely ruins the experience.

[spanky4ever]

There should be laws that say: If a big corp wants to outsource
to other countries, the workers should be allowed to take over the productions as a cooperative and given the opportunity of "free loans" that the Big Banks are given now - to buy out the owners.

[spanky4ever]

I will add a video about worker coops. Its pretty long, but you won't have to read a book

[video]https://youtu.be/Y_lamS0kHdQ[/video]

[Laurence Drake]

You should study politics, spankyou.

[spanky4ever]

That is what I am doing - by comunicating with you, and the web. But good luck studying Marxism in USA! No college/university or business school teach it. So I would suspect you dont know anything about it. I would like you to watch the video before you judge. I think this is the ONLY way to move forward for USA and Europe too. The alternative is to watch your workplace move overseas.

Btw Richard Wolff is a professor in economics who has been a student to your most prestigious universities (Harvard, Stanford AND Yale). I would take his assessment over yours, anyday.
Sorry if that hurts you

Even so, I would really hear your arguments, when you have some knowledge of what I am trying to communicate 2 u

[Le Dragon]

There are plenty of universities in the US that teach courses on Marx.

[spanky4ever]

I don't know much about Marx either - but trying to learn some more, and I am finding it interesting. The worker cooperative thought is pretty fascinating

[Dolan]

Coooperatives have been tried in Eastern Europe (Romania) during Communism and they proved to be a failure. Here's what happened:

Since people didn't feel that the property belonging to the cooperative was theirs, they tended to do a sloppy job, they just worked for the work's sake, they didn't feel motivated to give their best, since cooperatives actually belonged to the state. What is more, many workers have been stealing products from cooperatives, since they thought they weren't compensated well enough for their work. It's possible that this type of economic unit might work in particular cultures like Northern European ones, but surely not in Eastern or Southern Europe. People are a lot more individualistic in these areas, some say this is one of the reasons Communism failed in Eastern Europe, because most of the rural population never liked having their private property confiscated by the Communists and used in cooperatives, so they did a half-assed job, basically sabotaging the Communist party.

After the fall of Communism, a new phenomenon appeared. The state decided people should have their previous property returned, so the whole rural landscape became very fragmented. Since arable land was getting scarce, many Eastern European countries had to import agricultural products, although they had the potential to produce so much they could become exporters themselves. But it was the land fragmentation situation which made it impossible to have large profitable farming businesses. So people started joining associations of land owners, basically lending their land to a business which was doing large scale farming projects. The associate is getting a share of his products or some dividends from this at the end of the year. They can always leave the association, of course. These aren't really like communist cooperatives, but they seem to work better than the communist ones. Every associate joins this business because he's interested in making a profit, but he doesn't lose his property, he just lends it according to a contract.

[spanky4ever]

Cooperatives have been tried in Eastern Europe (Romania) during Communism and they proved to be a failure. Here's what happened:

@Dolan

notification

. You are aware of the fact that USA has 100s - maybe 1000s of cooperatives?
Im not talking about communism - cos that is just another top down system.
Real cooperatives are democratic, own by the workers and run by the workers (not the state and not the Ceo/stockholders) as a bottom up system. The workers choose their own CEO.
Please take the time to listen to the video i posted - and respond after. Could be interesting to hear your thoughts about it.

(psst Marxism is about the worker owning the tools - the factories)

[deleted_user0]

Good! Richard Wolff is saying that he studied in all these nr. 1 universities (in the world) and none of them was teaching Marx. But I am glad if that has changed.

I dont know to much about Marx either - but trying to learn some more, and I am finding it interesting. The worker cooperative thought is pretty facinating

er....!?!? His name is Metis?

[spanky4ever]

@umeu

notification

lol I was thinking of USA best Universities - be bad

[Dolan]

I'm sure these cooperatives can manage to be sustainable when they're managing small-scale production, that doesn't involve a lot of retooling. So, stuff like agricultural products, some textile processing or small local bakeries, edible oil production. Just like those survivalist communities that go "off the grid" manage to do all this stuff by themselves.

But when you need airplanes, microprocessors, big infrastructure, hospitals, universities, freight commercial transportation, cars, big power production facilities (hydro, thermal, fossil etc). All these things that make modern living possible need economies of bigger scale than just local cooperatives. Who's going to install that big cable across the ocean so that you can post these messages from Norway to a USA server? A local cooperative? They would need lots of big ships with submarines that can plough the sea floor and lay down the cables that would link entire continents into a common internet infrastructure.

Same for satellites, which are needed for lots of stuff we take for granted (communications across the entire world, live sports broadcasting, air traffic control, orientation by GPS). Do you think any of those cooperatives can build these satellites and put them into orbit? And built the aircraft necessary to haul them into space?

What about rare metals mining? This is going to be an important issue in the next period, since this sort of resources is getting depleted. Without them you couldn't have smartphones and other IT components, so no servers, no data centers. But you'd still have that locally made bread, cloth, fruits, wine, oil -- just not much of the amenities of modern life.

So, what's it gonna be: a simple life with product made locally but of low variety and not much global technological reach (no international communications, not much international commerce, global TV content, internet, etc).
Or a complex life with a big variety of products and access to a large number of networks of communication, commerce, transportation, etc?

[spanky4ever]

@Dolan

notification

say:

But you'd still have that locally made bread, cloth, fruits, wine, oil -- just not much of the amenities of modern life.

I don't agree with you saying only big corp can do those things. But here is one questions 2u: what are the use of those underwater cabel and the satilites - if we have polluted the oceans and the air to a place where nobody can live?
I have a good example: We fish pollack in Norway - freeze it - ship it to China in cargo ships - unfreeze it - make something else of it - freeze it again and ship it all the way back to Norway and make a profit (in the specific case I am talking about - nobody is buying it anymore - cos its shit)
In the case I am talking about - the marked dropped cos the commodity was very bad. But that is how its done - and we all suffer.

There is 2 things we have to consider; the workplace in a global economy and the "globe" itself.

This model of cooperatives has not been encouraged enough - I am starting to think it could be the future (if we are smart) What if the coopratives got all the taxbreakes the BIG Corp has - just think of it a minute? Apple hardly pay any taxes - still they are among (maybe be most) the most profitable corp in the world. They profit cos the community provide them of skilled labour, and all of the communications they want (satellites, roads, harbours, etc - all the goodies that the "government - community" provide for them - for FREE). Yes you read it right We (the community) give them all of this for free

[Dolan]

A bunch of underwater cables won't produce any pollution. And since they're installed on the seafloor, you won't see any fish stumbling over the cables either. You can relax, there won't be any whale getting its tail stuck in the Transatlantic internet cable.

What can I commentate on the choices of a particular business from Norway to ship raw fish to China to have it processed there? I suppose it's because that phase of processing is so much cheaper to get done in China, it's even worth transporting the fish all the way to China. This means living standards in your country are so high and wages are so high that nobody would work in fish processing without asking a huge pay. So your fish business has to process it in China, even though it's half the globe away.

Taxation is a bit of a comprehensive subject. I can imagine why so many companies want to save as much of their profit as possible, by looking for any possible means to avoid paying taxes. Still, this doesn't mean big corporations pay less taxes overall than your cooperatives or the common working men. They pay more, because they produce more.
It also depends on the level of taxation in each country. In my country, we have a flat tax system; so everyone (business or individual) pays the same % of taxes to the state. This is not unique to this country, there are plenty of other countries where a flat tax is applied. In the USA, I believe they have a system of income brackets, so if you fall between some levels of income (say 15.000 - 50.000 per month) you get taxed more than if you earn less. If I'm not mistaken, those with higher incomes pay higher % of taxes. Maybe that's why big corporations are looking for ways to dodge paying taxes, since they consider they worked hard to make that money and it would be a waste to simply give it to the state.

But, contrary to popular opinion, it's not corporations which are the biggest source of income to the public budget. The biggest chunk of taxes come from:
1. individual income taxes,
2. social insurance and retirement
3. corporate tax
4. excise duties (like alcohol, tobacco, oil excises etc)

Though, this hierarchy is a bit tricky to understand, because some corporations in the USA are registered as sole proprietorships, partnerships or closely held “S corporations” and they fall under individual income tax. Also more than 50% of the individual income tax is paid by about 3% of taxpayers, meaning some people are so rich they can individually pay half of the total US income tax. By contrast, people with less than $ 50000 paid about 6% of the total US income tax.

So how do corporations or rich people pay less taxes in the US? Maybe you want to say they pay less than they should, but that's another discussion. The figures show that the biggest % of receipts to the US public budget come from rich individuals and corporations, followed by social insurance taxes and excise (consumption) taxes.

[spanky4ever]

so you think that the most profitable business do not have to pay an taxes? (or next to non) is that fair? or do you see any problems with that?@Dolan

notification

psst:did you watch the video?

[spanky4ever]

[videohttps://youtu.be/YKHFoI10uRc][/video] this was ment to go in another post

[spanky4ever]

[video]https://youtu.be/YKHFoI10uRc[/video]

[deleted_user0]

Did you read das kapital? Not an excerpt, but the actual book?

[Dolan]

psst:did you watch the video?

I watched it and I fell asleep. I had to walk around and slap myself to stay awake.

[evilcheadar]

The Young Turks suck

[spanky4ever]

Total revenue of Coops in USA; 653 billion dollars. Total jobs 835.310. Number of US cooperatives (excluding housing) 29,284. number of worker owned coops: only 223 so i would argue that are great potential here. https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... Pm-jn__NQA
More and more ppl and economist agree that Capitalism is flawed because it is not able to distribute wealth among citizens in a sustainable manner. You could very well say that the "marked" is not working any longer. When the inequality grows to big, you get stagnation, crashes, and in the end you will get a revolution (peaceful in a political way - or a bloody one)
Here is a fact: The inequality that the world are facing now, has never in human history been greater.