Guide to creating a socialist utopia

Which shouldn't matter, because all of the workers are busy working their highly paid jobs that offer superior working conditions. Those "previous business owners" wouldn't have a pot to (*)(*)(*)(*) in with getting people to work for them. So it would be pointless to outlaw certain types of businesses.

Your argument, like all utopian fantasies, makes no sense when logic is applied.

 

That's why I mentioned culture. In a society with a bad culture democracy would certainly be a problem. But in a developed society with a positive culture where people respect the rights of minorities democracy is a good thing. How do you think minorities gained their rights in the first place? - from the charity of others who felt compelled to fight for them.

 

The bottom line is, if you don't have choices you don't have choices. Eastern Europe or Western Biloxi.

 

"Charity of others" = big Government pandering for votes.

 

Yet you want to deprive the minority of their right to use their private property how they see fit.

 

I'm mainly refurring to the rich with multinationalist lifestyles. Once a country is 'lost' to socialism, the rich in other countries would be fighting to overthrow socialism - unless they have a sudden change of heart. Look at the history of what the rich have done after a country becomes commited to socialism. Of corse if you're talking about a socialist world then fine, no need for the law.

 

Noone would have private property. Notice the words "socially owned".

 

So you will use force to deprive people of their property? What about the people who don't want to give it up?

 

Fine, believe what you want. We're all immoral for fighting for the rights of minorities.

 

People who use the property will jointly control it. But the point is that by encouraging worker cooperatives (resulting in the withering away of the old businesses as they lose their workers by the worker's choice) before the switch to socialism we will have already effectively won the 'property' battle for businesses. As long as the workers are not deprived of their right to control their means of production I do not give a crap that the previously rich business "owners" do. The owners did not deserve to control the means of production anyway because they did not really contribute, and it's their own fault.

 

Any system requires force to maintain a system. Capitalism requires force to maintain private property. It's not about force, it's about legitimacy.

The Eastern European countries didn't not have the variant of socialism advocated in this thread. That being said, socialism is quite popular in Eastern Europe, more popular than in the US.

In those countries that had felt more directly the impact of the USSR’s dissolution in terms of their living standards, the loss of political and economic backing or where it was widely viewed as an alternative to capitalism, the trend was the reverse. Some 61 percent of Russians and 54 percent of Ukrainians felt it had a negative impact, as did the majority of those in Pakistan and Egypt.

43% of Eastern Europeans favours socialism, while the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia is polling at 17%.

The same goes for owning people: So you will use force to deprive people of their property [slaves]? What about the people who don't want to give it [their slaves] up?

The question is, is private ownership of the means of production legitimate. Socialists argue it is not, and hence forcing people to give up their private property is not coercive. Rather the opposite, maintaining private property is seen as coercive (giving that wage-labour is based on asymmetrical power relations). Of course you disagree with this assumption, but throwing around petitio principii wont advance this discussion.

 

There won't be any businesses under socialism. A business implies commerce, commerce implies capitalism. Socialism will be based on associations of equal producers, these associations will transcend workplaces and thus we cannot speak of "business" or "corporations."

 

Except in Eastern Europe the choices didn't exist by government design. In the US, at least until the left manages to mandate them out of our lives, choices are an integral part of what we mean by words like "freedom" and "opportunity". Whatever attractive forces pulls immigrants toward the US rather than repelling citizens away to other nations, choices, even materialistic ones, have historically been one of the more influential. If we didn't have a huge variety of life choices here, we would be experiencing emigration rather than immigration.

 

All countries experience both emigration and immigration. Even in North Korea people sometimes find ways to escape, and there are people movi-oh wait, I don't think anyone actually immigrates there...

Anyway, I think you'll find that the people moving to the US are usually from countries with worse standards of living, and the people moving away are usually moving to countries with better standard of living. Annoyingly for me, living in Adelaide, Australia there isn't any city with a better quality of living to go to

 

Actually, there was a South Korean soldier that defected to North Korea.

 

Of course - higher standards of living are hugely influential in people's migration patterns. Higher standards of living in the US has traditionally translated into more and better quality available personal choices. Pretty simple. Also, I don't see very many people attempting to sneak into N. Korea or, proportionally, most of the other nations that have willingly opted for highly centralized authoritarian control. It's weird that there are so many in the US that still think that an ever more centralized and powerful controlling authority is the way to go.

 

If they have the ability to vote, they'd never pass the law in the first place.

I'm hoping that you're quite young. Anyway, I could go into the "why" of your systems not working, but it'll probalby be better if I just let you put things together yourself over the years.

For now what you should realize is that in the US, and probably Australia as well, your "step 1" has been implimented. You can create businesses exactly along those lines, and there are various government incentives to do so. Some companies like that even exist. In the midwest they actually used to be common a generation or so ago as individuals in rural areas banded together to create businesses that weren't out there yet, like power utilities and health insurance.

However generally it is the cooperatives that are withering away, as the improved standards and wages you imagine simply do not materialize in the long run.

So if you're a utopist, come up with something different that might actually have a chance of working. If you just want more stuff and hate the rich you do seem to live in a pretty safe place to lead a life of crime.

 

You have to use force to the detriment of the people to acheive your socialist utopia and here is why. Your worker owned cooperatives cannot compete in a market system with the centrally controlled businesses. Eventually some person will create a better mouse trap. If that person is left free to start his/her own business they will establish market dominance over your own worker owned cooperatives because consumers will choose the better product. As revenue going to your worker owned cooperatives dwindles so does their pay and benefits. At the same time the revenue going to the centrally controlled business is skyrocketing. This gives the capitalist entrepreneur the capital to go out and hire the best workers from the cooperatives and put their expertise to use at their company further improving their competitive advantage while hurting the cooperatives.

This is the classic flaw with socialism. It is all based on a static economy because Marx was a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idiot. Sure the people now own the means of production but innovation stalls and everyone is left worse off. Sure the people may now own the means of production for the refrigerator plant but 50 years later it is still the same refrigerators.

 

Marx actually never really wrote about socialism (except some vague descriptions), firstly, so my guess is you have never actually read him. Secondly, you are wrong. Innovation flourishes where there is autonomy (which is non-existent within those centrally controlled businesses), and money has an inverse effect on innovation:

[video=youtube;u6XAPnuFjJc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc[/video]

 

And now your credibility is shot. Socialism pre-existed Marx. Marx's own philosophy came about because of a disagreement with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a prominent libertarian socialist.

 

How sad that you had to cut out 90% of his post in order to respond with a tangent. Care to address the meat of his post, or would that be too inconvenient for your socialist narrative?

 

It's not a tangent. Anyone who thinks socialism is Marx's baby shows a clear lack of research into the subject. A lack of research on the subject matter calls the rest into question.

That, and I'm lazy and tired of correcting people on socialism when they "know" more than actual socialists do. So meh.

 

One can carefully and painstakenly explain until they're blue in the face...

that the inherent qualities found in human nature...idiosyncratic levels of greed, personal interests and goals...
prohibit success of collectivist economies of scale...

that all such socioeconomic constructs immediately..or ultimately...succumb to an authoritarian power structure of "deciders"...
to "fairly" and "equitably" disseminate the collective's garnered gains...

and that this authoritarian power structure is subject to the same expansion, fraud, graft, and systemic corruption...
as every other socioeconomic system....

but they simply ignore such, and keep right on trying to sell their fatally flawed 'utopia'.

 

Yes, because we have examples where it actually worked.

 

"Sell" me that "Nordic Model" again...I'll be more than happy to shoot it down again.