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how money should flow (feddit.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org to c/politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
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that's what money flow should look like.

community (town, city) donates money to people, who then use it to buy goods and services from companies (which make a profit that way) that are then taxed by the community.

share your opinion

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[–] Foxer@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago

The most effective system in history by far (and it's not even close) Is capitalism. One of the primary tenants of capitalism is that in order for it to work for every dollar paid a dollar of value must be created. That system can sustain a certain level of inefficiency and donation and charity but only a little before it begins to drag the entire system to a halt.

You've created some sort of weird closed loop where money is spent and then taxed again into infinity and that's just not a viable thing. There's nothing in that loop that creates the wealth in the first place. Well doesn't exist unless it is constantly created and not only would your system not be able to function for any length of time, it would basically guarantee that poorer people would never have a chance of getting ahead I would be stuck in a perpetual cycle dependent on the government and unable to move out of their class

[–] NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

For profit companies are by definition inefficient. Profit is the difference between income and expenses, so by definition any profit means they are spending more than they have to or charging more than they need to.

[–] BigDiction@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah yes, in the imaginary lazy river of money that never leaks.

But what if it does leak? What if the river requires expansion? What if there’s a drought, and you need a backup source of water to keep the river flowing?

[–] idealism_nearby@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Surpluses for the purposes of maintenance and expansion need to exist

They do not need to be controlled by capitalists for the purposes of enriching themselves.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

and?

[–] NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 weeks ago

So the idea that money should flow through for profit companies is flawed, IMHO.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -1 points 3 weeks ago

Coops are great: not foolproof, but ahuge step in þe right direction.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The obvious question you have to ask here is why that's not happening. And the answer there is that the government serves the interest of the ruling class which is the capital owning class. People with significant amounts of capital pay for political campaigns, buy up media, do lobbying, and thus have far greater say within the system than regular working class stiffs. Also, note how the working class has practically no representation within any western political parties. So, even individual interests of the politicians are aligned with their wealth patrons rather than the working majority.

The other problem here is that UBI can be easily gamed where companies simply adjust their prices to account for basic income they know people have. A better approach would be to provide universal basic services where people have guaranteed access to basic needs. Of course, that would require state run industry to provide those services. At which point we need to ask the next question which how this system would be better than a combination of state owned economy and worker run cooperatives. In the latter case, state run industry would be responsible for providing these basic services, building infrastructure, and managing other cross cutting concerns like energy production, and food security. Meanwhile, worker cooperatives would fill the same niche as private enterprise does under capitalism, except they wouldn't suffer from a problem of the wealth being concentrated in the hands of people who own the companies. It would go directly to the workers and circulate back into the economy.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

How does the state-run alternative system avoid being captured by an elite class?

I see bits and pieces of the argument you’ve presented here, but this is the first time I’ve seen the whole thing. It’s illogical. It does not follow whatsoever. If elites can capture the system we have now, they can also capture a state-run system of services.

If you can’t trust the government right now, the thought of giving it even more power should make you trust it less, not more.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This is not a theoretical debate, we have direct example from USSR. There is no guarantee that a start run system won't have elite capture, but the dynamics are fundamentally different. For example, people like Musk or Bezos simply didn't exist in USSR. You could have status if you were high up in a party, but that just meant having a bigger apartment. Max salary was capped at 9x the minimum, and it was actually scientists and engineers who had the highest salaries. So, the way you advanced within the system and got higher status was by contributing. And we can also see how this quickly changed after a transition to capitalism when an extractive oligarch class appeared overnight. It's a clear example of how systemic incentives directly affect the outcomes.

Also, a single party state actually has a far higher incentive to be seen as legitimate by the public because everybody knows that when things go wrong the party is to blame. The power of the party is directly derived from social stability. Meanwhile, in liberal form of democracy, parties can just play hot potato with responsibility. If they lose an election they then somebody else gets to run things for a while, and then they get back into power like nothing happened.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You didn’t have people like Musk or Bezos, you had people like Stalin or Beria. If you’re going to try to argue that that’s some kind of improvement, I can’t really take you seriously.

I would caution anyone who thinks life is better under another regime just because the numbers are smaller. That’s a pitfall many people here seem to keep falling into. Numbers are meaningless without a discussion of quality of life. We’re ALL living like kings (yes, even people struggling to afford a 1BR studio working a retail job) compared to people under Stalinism.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you think Stalin is worse than Musk or Bezos there's really no point trying to have a discussion with you. I grew up in USSR, and it's always hilarious to watch ignoramuses try to tell me what life there was really like. You're like a poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect buddy.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We’ll have to agree to disagree then.

Have a great day!

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You can disagree all you like but the facts are not on your side.

Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:

USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:

USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

USSR ended famines under Stalin https://artir.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/the-soviet-series-from-farm-to-factory-stalins-industrial-revolution/

Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:

USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:

USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:

The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:

GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:

The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:

Now let's look at what happens after the USSR collapsed, and what came with capitalist privatization:

For an overview of the soviet experiment, watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut.

Also read this great article by Stephen Gowans, Do publicly owned, planned economies work?. Audio on youtube

And here we have some academic studies on USSR

Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possible:

Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:

A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:

This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.

This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.

Romania, the inustrialization of an agrarian economy under socialist planning

[–] chloroken@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 weeks ago

Read a history book.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

thanks. i asked you to comment because i wanted to hear your opinion.

now, i don't fully understand your response.

about the worker cooperatives: the thing that keeps bothering me is: what if the company makes no profit? i.e. it is a common and very wrong assumption that big companies are mostly profitable. many very big companies have huge fluctuations in their income, some never turn profitable at all. now, if worker's pay is dependent on company profitability, i worry that they're in for a rocky ride.

government serves the interest of the ruling class which is the capital owning class

and this is just plainly wrong. i guess you're talking about the democrats from the USA here. yeah those suck but to generalize it to "all government" seems just flatly off to me. i've seen many government institutions do great good around the world, such as in europe.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean if a company isn't making profit then it doesn't have a viable business model to begin with. VCs throwing money at sketchy business ventures is precisely how we get bubbles and crashes. Meanwhile, for the bootstrapping case, the central bank could play a role of the VC where people can apply for a loan for their business idea and the bank floats them the money to get it started requiring that it's operated as a cooperative. If something is unprofitable to do, but is socially necessary then it should be operated as a state owned enterprise and the cost of operation is justified by the social value it produces.

i guess you’re talking about the democrats from the USA here.

No, I'm talking about any government in a capitalist state. While this is simply more obvious in the US, the exact same dynamic is present in European capitalist states. The government doesn't exist in a vacuum it's a product of the way a social system is structured. If you have a capitalist system, then it will create selection pressures for a particular type of government. Notice how you completely failed to address the specific mechanics I listed and simply dismissed what I said based on vibes. Try actually thinking about what I wrote and addressing that.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean if a company isn’t making profit then it doesn’t have a viable business model to begin with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall

a lot of economists (and me) agree that all companies should eventually become unprofitable. then what?

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The context for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is having a capitalist system of economic relations. Profit doesn't need to be a driver of economy, that's simply a mechanic within a specific economic system that's currently failing. The point of an economy is to allocate labour and resources in a way that improves lives for the people living in a particular society. Using the profit motive to allocate resources is how markets do this allocation, but that's certainly not the only way to do things. A lot of economists (and you) should take a look at how alternative economic systems in Vietnam, China, and DPRK work. In case of China and Vietnam, you have a hybrid system where you have state planning and the state holds the commanding heights of the economy, while markets and private enterprise are used as allocators within that context. Meanwhile, DPRK has a full state planned economy combined with cooperative ownership. All three are outperforming western economic system by a wide margin right now, and they don't suffer from constant economic crashes we see in the west.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

admittedly i've never really looked into eastern contemporary economic models, largely because of how inaccessible they are to me as somebody who does not speak the native language; an important contentious point to me are the following two: what is the role of workers in cosmology, and how to deal with non-workers?

  • the first important question to ask is "what is the role of workers in cosmology"? in other words, what is the reason that humans are regarded special; why do we grant special rights and protection to humans, but not to other animals and plants. Where does this special role come from, and what conditions must be fulfilled to upkeep this role?

the way i see it, humans are a kind of driving force of history in an universal market that is tended towards growth. i'm a huge fan of outer-space human settlements (such as mars settlement), and realistically, only humans can do it. other species cannot; so we have to do it and obviously get a reward for it, since we're doing it for all of nature, not just ourselves. plants profit from larger access to land as well. this justifies putting humans on a pedestal.

  • however, what happens to the humans that stay behind? i.e. those not willing to endure hardships to go on a space trip? as i see it, maintaining an equilibrium does not require humans; nature has existed billions of years just fine without us. then, what justifies that we continue to put ourselves on a pedestal? what is the deeper philosophical reason for this?
[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

I mean there are plenty of books on the subject in English. For example, China's Great Road is a great primer on how Chinese economy works and its historical context http://rdcy.ruc.edu.cn/yw/PUBLICATIONS/Books/f87f6b3cda0d45bfb22c2d3da5b3db3d.htm

And regarding the second point, I don't really believe in any sort of historical determinism. I don't think there's a purpose for humanity or that we need to spread life throughout the cosmos. It is something I'd personally would find interesting, but I don't think it's predetermined in any way or even more likely than us going extinct. The growth trajectory we're following right now isn't really different that from a bacteria culture in a petri dish where it exponentially expands to use up all available resources and then dies off.

Also, I think it could be likely that humans are a transitional species bridging the gap between organic life and some other substrate that we create. It could be that future post biological life will bootstrap on silicon or some other engineered substrate. And that's what's going to colonize space because it will be able to engineer itself to adapt to the conditions of space and thrive there naturally. I don't see anything fundamental about biology that is necessary for intelligence, I expect that algorithms in our brains are transferable to other substrates, and that eventually we will build machines that can think in the same way we do and have similar type of conscious experience to us. These kinds of beings would be far better suited to space travel, and could thrive naturally in that environment.

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Trickle up economy.

[–] ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Missing a couple flows in there, immediately coming to mind would be community to public services/infra, and company to employee, aka people.

UBI of some sort will likely become a requirement for society to survive if we continue the path to infinite consolidation of wealth and power.

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

community to public services/infra

That's policy flow.

and company to employee, aka people.

Not needed with UBI. UBI will be a requirement. The only question is if a country gets there before China does.

[–] PotatoPie@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 weeks ago

I already shared this opinion on a different community, reposting here o/

Each node benefits from taking share of other node's flow, the people want more donations to buy goods, companies want more payments to increase profits, community wants more taxation to donate more to people, none are willing to get the lowest flow and in turn none are willing to increase flow to the rest, this dynamic of relying on other parties doesn't benefit their goal

If money flow should look like this it has to be beneficial to everyone, somewhat like animal kingdom predation flow, you can argue it's natural although it's really just forced on all the animals they had no say in being part of this, but you can't really claim that being eaten and fighting for your piece of the flow is ideal to anyone, so there can't be a flow to aim for unless it's biased

To get an ideal system all nodes have to benefit from other nodes getting flow instead of hoarding it themselves -remove private ownership from people so personal goods are worthless and community locks donations behind spending/working(you get money from building/spending on your local community) -remove competition between companies through nationalizing or globalizing and people lock spending behind taxation/benefits generated -remove violence and enforcement from community and companies lock taxation behind donation quantity/management quality

You'll need a 4th divine body that can see everything while not being part of the flow to monitor and track these nodes, more importantly, removing violence and enforcement has lead to incursions and invasions, but at least the Ideal flow was achieved, mission successfully failed