Jun 25, 17 / Leo 08, 01 06:04 UTC

Communism  

"There is a spector haunting space, that spector is communism." Why communism you may ask, well the answer is simple, we cannot survive in this system. Capitalism relies on exploitation and consumerism, but in order to build our new society this cannot work. In space we have limited resources and must firmly rely on each other to assure our survival, but if people are not assured their bread, if they are refused their necessities, then no work will be done and life will be thrown into chaos. We must assure all people meet their needs because without, the people will throw up in arms and in the end our nation will die as soon as it was made.

Some books to read, communist manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm, the conquest of bread https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread#toc3, and mutual aid a factor of evolution https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

Jun 25, 17 / Leo 08, 01 13:15 UTC

Yes people need to eat and have enough not to revolt, but as far as I can tell, capitalism gets that job done rather nicely. Capitalism coupled with social welfare programs gets food to everyone and enough toys to everyone so they don't revolt. Space is also infinite so it would be safe to assume we can always find more resources to consume. It isn't like communism doesn't consume resources. Communism in the past had led to mass starvation due to several reasons but one of them being that with the loss of a free market you also lose the most efficient way to distribute resources in the most optimal way. 

One thing communism throws away that western civilization has is the inherent quality of the individual. In a capitalistic market and a democratic society, the individual matters. That's important because when cultures disregard the individual and start thinking in group mentalities and mechanics, like communism, peoples human rights get violated. People starve. 

  

Jul 6, 17 / Leo 19, 01 00:58 UTC

"capitalism gets that job done rather nicely."

This is hilarious and terrible at the same time. 

Communism is an old word, one that we still link to historical mistakes and false interpretations. There's never been a communist society, and as long as people will accept the frightening results of capitalism and praise it's destruction not only of our individual but of the Earth itself, there will never be one. If the one we're trying to build really is a society built upon the empiristic scientifical spirit that guided the enlightment of the XVIIIth century and the will to learn from reality (and not the digital reality that the neo capitalistic society created) and our mistakes, we better not choose capitalism as our model. Communism, on the other hand, has a few good points, but it's still built upon an era that's no more, as there are no more classes but something way more frightening: entire continents are now the proletariat while others are the burgeoise, all of them with the same aim to destroy the planet to create profit, looking for a welfare that will never exist. We can learn Hegelian dialecticts from Marx and the inspirations from Feuerbach, mostly, we'll have not to create a monetary system. As for the rest, let's keep studying, and mixing ideas, we don't have to choose one and go for it. 

I will not sign the constitution if taxes are involved.

Jul 11, 17 / Leo 24, 01 12:27 UTC

"There's never been a communist society"

You're argument is that communism isn't so bad because all the previous horrible failures weren't really communism. That argument lacks substance. I could make the same argument for capitalism and say that the only reason you hate capitalism is due to the issues with the current capitalist societies. Communism has starved far more people than capitalism in the last 2 centuries. So I would say the burden is on you to explain exactly what was wrong with those communist states. Explain exactly what makes them "not" communist and explain how your version would be so different. Keep in mind that the more your version starts to resemble their version the more we're going to point out that it will inevitably end up with the same result. So tell us, why were Jospeh Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sun, and Nicolae Ceaușescu wrong. 

Why is your version so pure and theirs so tainted? And forgive me, but those books have been around for a while, and yet nations still continue to get it wrong. So I think you're going to have to give some new evidence as to why this is the case. Those links aren't going to cut it.

Jul 31, 17 / Vir 16, 01 20:02 UTC

I'll premise this with the fact that I largely agree with the economic ideas of Richard Wolf and Mark Blyth but not necessarily with the prescriptions of their assessments. While communism a la the USSR and China are failures there are concepts that are viable in democratization of workplaces and democratic planning rather than centralized state planning. That said, there are things that can be done to tame capitalisms excesses and provide for common welfare without a massive overhaul of modern economics. Below is one I came up with a few days ago to address societal/environmental neglect by corporations in the US though I'm sure it could apply elsewhere.

Proposition 1: Abolish the minimum wage. Impose an executive compensation cap relative to average worker pay. 

Purpose - Prevent wage stagnation and consolidation of wealth while incentivising increased worker pay but not mandating it.

Proposition 2: At the federal level mandate the creation of "community shareholdings". Companies with public shares would be required to apportion shares to community shareholding. This apportion should be a proportion of total shares rather than a specific number. The amount my brain toys with at the moment is between 1/5 and 1/3 of shares. Each municipality that the corporation operates within is apportioned an equal proportion of shares and benefits from any mandated policies regarding responsibility to shareholders the company may have. This means smaller corporations will apportion a large number of shares to a few municipalities while larger ones will apportion smaller numbers of shares to more municipalities.

Purpose - By requiring payment and responsibility to municipalities they operate in corporations will act more responsibly and efforts to take advantage of municipalities are disincentivised as they will receive back the profits gained from such manipulations in shareholder dividends. This also acts as a stopgap against inflation as the feedback loop into UBI from profits also discourages price hiking.

Proposition 3: Funds gained from said community shareholdings are used to fund a Universal Basic Income.

Purpose - As automation increases and per-capita productivity reaches new levels, full employment has started to become an impossibility and will only get worse. Without a safety net to "catch" those disenfranchised by these changes our economies will collapse due to lack of financial mobility and trade as well as the governments which depend on those economies.

This is very rough but addresses many of the core issues of social welfare.

Nov 30, 17 / Sag 26, 01 18:06 UTC

Here is something far superior - a Resource Based Economy. Here is my post on it:

https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/policy-and-scope-74/topic/money-or-moneyless-1034/?post=37543#37543

Jul 16, 18 / Vir 01, 02 01:41 UTC

Gotta love these discussions on communism, capitalism, etc

So far all systems we have been able to come up with have been flawed, communism has failed because there hasn't been a single country that was able to implement it in its truest form without turning into some form of dictatorship. (That fact alone should worry you before you try and implement it in a new country)

But if you say capitalism is doing a decent job keeping populations fed you must be coming from a first world country and are unwilling to use the internet (that you clearly have, or else you wouldn't be posting here) to do some actual research. Capitalism is failing for all but a small group, and the populations of western nations are slowly following the rest of the world, more and more jobs are not paying enough to leave decent, homelessness on the rise and more and more jobs set to be automated in the coming decades.

Instead of advocating a flawed system we actually have the chance to create something new...maybe better, maybe just as flawed, but new nonetheless. Let's learn from history and make new mistakes.


And resource based economies...untried, interesting idea (guessing you spent some time at the Venus project website ^^) how well would that work in space though? Taking into account that for an enormous amount of products and resources we'd be depending on other nations...