Collectivism is Inherently Selfish

Linux is an open market and this makes for thousands of different offerings because there is no control over what people do with it. There is some standards and some coordinating bodies but even that is fragmented as people implement their ideas of what they think an operating system should be without restraint. Let the free market make the decisions. This is distinctly not a winner take all market because the license requires all derivative intellectual property to be published and given away for free. The result is open source software like the Apache PHP MYSQL suite, which is entirely free to use and runs most of the Internet. A suite which many large corporations continue to contribute to but is coordinated and overseen by a vast worldwide community of volunteers. It is this collective effort that made the cost of a web site the price of a pc and an internet connection.

Computing is a very large space and the PC is a small part of that. In fact, the only space that Linux has not taken over is the personal PC market and that is because the market is dominated by Microsoft, which has enough power across the market to keep competitors out. It latest initiative is secure boot, which, while supposedly putting security on the motherboard, makes it impossible for PC owners to install another operating system that is not licensed by Microsoft.

Back on to the OP....
If there is any selfish motivation to this it is to prevent anyone else from gaining ownership of intellectual property to control who can use it. So yes there may be some selfish motivation to collective efforts but it is also just as plausible and likely that many of the people involved in these efforts are really altruists, contributing to a public cause that they deem worthy of their efforts without any expectation of personal benefit simply because they can.

There is a lot of people wandering around this planet whose primary concern is not making money. To believe otherwise is a huge mistake. To adopt thinking that assumes all individuals are motivated primarily by personal monetary gain is simply insane. That there is entire schools of economics dedicated to this thinking shows just how insane the times are that we live in.

 

Well, right off the bat, you misunderstood the Proudhon reference. He and fellow anti-capitalists were talking about private property - farms, factories, clinics, and so on -, not property in general. The assertion was originally based on the idea that if one person had the ability to generate capital on a piece of land, this deprived his fellows of that right. It was basically him taking a stand against privatization which, being a left anarchist, Proudhon wanted to ameliorate through ownership in groups. Later on however, the term was developed to included Marx's Labor Theory of Value. So it's a good way for leftists to produce artificial controversy, and for their opponents to create straw men, but at this point it's too misunderstood to hold any real meaning outside of radical intellectual circles.

And collectivism is far more broad than you make it out to be. It's not an opposition to rich people - which leftists express, but for different reasons than you'd expect -, but instead the moral foundation for a number of salient ideologies. I'd say that, in essence, it just means that society should be built to address the needs of everyone, not merely those of an upper class.

 

The latter group does exist, and is just as likely to be right of center as left. The major difference between them and the selfish collectivist is the pleasure they get out of altruism. They definitely aren't petitioning government to take over their job.

You act as if the whole world is money crazy. A significant portion of the population that is quite happy having enough money to pursue interests other than work.

Some live to go to the desert every weekend, some to the lake or ocean, some play video games, some hang with friends, some play sports. Give them enough money to pursue these interests and they would be quite happy. Work is something they do so to earn to afford to "play".

There are those like me, that have a job they really like (most, not all, of the time), because it gives me a creative outlet. When I'm not at work, I'm busy designing any number of things. My income is good, because of my capabilities and my productivity. Not because money is my focus.

If you perceive the problem to be the 1% that earn too much, what is your solution?

 

Only the collectivism, of a well regulated Militia is specifically enumerated as necessary to the security of a free State.

 

Here you outline one of the left's major grievances with work. You'll often hear left radicals (mostly libertarian communists) saying they want to abolish work , but this doesn't mean what you think it does. It means they hold opposition to the current state of work, which as you say, is often one where a person doesn't express themselves within their contribution to society - this current state is a means to an end.

As for your question, there have been numerous manifestos, programmes, and visionary pamphlets that outline the full position of various individuals and groups on the left. But perhaps the most agreed solutions to the problem you noted would go like this:

1. Complete democratization of capitalist firms.
2. Institution of a national, progressive tax.
3. Large scale shift of power from the federal government to municipal governments, and the institution of participatory democracy within all sectors of municipalities.
4. Allocation of all profits from capitalist firms to local, municipal governments.

The solution that's generally posed isn't to simply take the money of the upper classes, but instead disintegrate the structures they use to accumulate it at the expense of others.

 

Yes they do, because I am one of them and I do it simply because I can.

No, what i am talking about is that the money crazed are making it difficult for those like you and me to make enough to pursue our particular interests and there is political movements supported by entire schools of thought in economics, sociology and psychology devoted to defending them.

I would not begrudge the wealthy their riches if the concentration of the nations wealth in their hands did not create a situation in which so many are precluded from enjoying a decent life simply because the economy has become structured so that its functioning requires that many will be inherently unable to secure employment that provides an income adequate to meet their basic survival needs, let alone any desire to pursue an avocation or hobby.

I could care less how much money people have but if they are only concerned with increasing their personal wealth without regard to how their actions effect others they are morally bankrupt and deserve nothing. They should be taxed to the hilt and their estates confiscated so their children can live in the same abject poverty that they visited on the victims of their crusade to accumulate wealth.

 

Democratization of firms? You mean nationalization? Have an instance where that has produced lower total costs or an improvement in quality comparable to the gains made by the private sector? Even Dems know it is better to just tell business what to do so when it goes wrong they can blame the "free market " they meddle in. Look at the subprime mortgage crisis, energy etc . ...

 

[video=youtube;S6ZsXrzF8Cc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpag e&v=S6ZsXrzF8Cc[/video]

 

Why exactly do you want the government to get involved? Do you think only altruistic people go into government service?

We agree.

How much do the top 5% effect the cost of things you and I buy? Do they buy so much food, that my costs are higher? Do they buy so many mid priced cars, median priced homes?

How exactly does their wealth cost us more?

If anything else, 20 years ago the rich created a market for very high end mobile devices - laptops and cell phones. You could tell who was rich by seeing who, at the airport, was using them. Now, young kids have phones and laptops (or tablets).

Unemployment has much more to do with productivity than the selfishness of the rich (during feudal days, employment was 100%). It is that productivity that allows the level of socialism there is now.


By the way - Ubuntu 13.04 was the ticket - fully operation ASUS 1000HE (even tells me how many hours of battery I have left....)

 

Finally! He gets it! The federal government should only be in the collective business when it comes to defense. All the rest is BS, except maybe some disaster relief, which should again be run by those heroes in the military who can setup shop in a day.

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I like the part in that video where they left out how rich the people are from getting all those products. They make it seem like you can be in business selling nothing. (Without big government at least)

 

What would be wrong with full employment of resources in the market for labor, in modern times?

 

A worker could only produce what they consume. Productivity (or hours worked) would plummet.

 

How do we get there with government waste an regulations that ship jobs overseas? In specifics, no more of this "well we just need to bear true witness to blah blah blaah" Lets here some plans and more rhetoric. You are starting to sound like Obama, no plan, big talk.

 

It has to do with bearing true witness to the concept and legal doctrine of employment at will and equal application of that law in any at-will employment State and those federal jurisdictions. The infrastructure already exists.

We could be lowering our tax burden by drawing participants from more expensive means tested programs while improving the efficiency of our economy in the process by better ensuring, full employment of resources in the market for labor.

There is no reason why unemployment compensation could not function as a form of minimum wage that also solves simple poverty when due to a lack of income that would otherwise be obtained from employment in a more efficient market for labor.

Anyone claiming unemployment compensation that hypothetically clears our poverty guidelines would be free to become more marketable in a manner that best conforms to Individual Liberty and personal preference.

 

Of course you are wrong. How? Simple. A concern for the collective (as in collectivism) cannot be selfish because it is necessarily focused on a group. Selfishness is a concern for oneself above all others. Collectivists advocate the equal interest of all. This post logically, necessarily is oxymoronic.

 

Then you didn't understand it. I pointed out that most people who claim to believe in collectivism are selfish hypocrites because they only want to get. Someone whose true concern is for the collective is more focused on giving.

Thus most collectivists are only acting in their own self-interest and hiding behind the collective to justify it.

 

I got it. I understand your point. I just wanted it to be made clear that your argument (whatever you may think of it) is inherently oxymoronic and logically invalid. As to the point you are making substantively, I think you are tossing out a mere assertion. How do you know that most collectivists have anything to gain by the implementation of collectivist economics. I have such beliefs, and am fairly solidly middle class. I do not suppose that I have any personal gain from the implementation of socialist policies. I support them nonetheless. That assertion is as unfair as claiming that everyone who supports the free market is a greedy money whore.

 

How much do you give compared to how much you expect in return? In fact, how much do you give at all? The average person who supports collectivist policies (or at least the average person who is vocal about it) is almost exclusively concerned with getting. Always complaining about how other people have too much and need to give more. And never giving anything from their own pockets to support their own cause. Someone who is truly focused on giving doesn't waste time or energy worrying about what other people are doing because they are too busy leading by example.

 

A view through the lens of greedy selfishness is a perception that defines all human activity as action to achieve selfish desire. Altruism, by definition, is an impossible human activity so collectivism can only be explained by selfish desire, which is, by definition, the motivation for all human activity.
Feel like you are going in circles?
You are. There are more circular arguments than that but not many.

 

How does the collectivism=selfishness argument work for a hypothetical, divine Commune of Heaven where men are Angels enough to practice, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need"?

 

Why do you support socialist policies if you get no personal gain? What percent of your income is your support of socialism worth?

Why would collectivism, socialism, etc. be any more resistant to greed than capitalism?

 

Capitalism is haunted by greed, but collectivism isn't?

Man is inherently greedy - the ones that weren't didn't contribute to the gene pool.

Capitalism doesn't cause greed, it tempers it by creating a system where the winners are those that "earn" the most customers by providing the best price / quality / performance / safest / least impact on the environment / etc. product. Capitalism gets mucked up when government shifts from just big enough to prevent fraud to big enough to pick winners and losers.

How does collectivism deal with greed, government? Where do you think the greedy will go?

 

Capitalism is built on labour market exploitation, a coercion that you deliberately ignore.

This is just confusion of capitalism with the market. Indeed, capitalism- given its tendency towards market concentration- tends to partially replace the market with economic planning. That necessarily leads to moral hazard problems which are accentuated by asymmetric information. This further advertises capitalism's tendency towards coercion, ensuring that mutually beneficial exchange is often alien to its nature.

This is just a re-hashing of the fib encouraged by fake libertarianism, typically fed by corporate interests. It is particularly annoying as government is the key economic agent in capitalism. Without government interventionism, capitalism dies.

 

What BS is this? Government involvement in the economy is the opposite of capitalism.

How does capitalism exploit labor? How is this less exploitation that government forced labor or feudalism or any other economic mechanism?

 

You're making a very elementary error. You're confusing the economics spectrum (from laissez faire to command economy) with political economy into capitalism.

The existence of involuntary unemployment and underpayment gives the game away somewhat. The labour market cannot be understood with reference to supply & demand as, unlike what is predicted in an economy without coercion, wages do not reflect productivity criteria