Azaran on 5/7/2012 at 19:59
If I'm not mistaken, nothing in Marx's original writings justifies totalitarian power. Even the notion of "dictatorship of the proletariat" has little to do with any real dictatorship, and refers to putting the power in the hands of the working class. The individual who perverted this notion was Lenin, who used it (and the supposed threat of capitalists, saboteurs and internal enemies) to justify his autocratic rule. All subsequent "communist" regimes followed Lenin's model unfortunately.
demagogue on 5/7/2012 at 20:12
I'd by sympathetic with a theory that one of the biggest evils in modern governance is the concentration of power, in governments, societies, cultures, or corporations.
But the whole thing about taking transactions out of an open market & shoving them in a black box so you can't have open negotiations or real price signals, you have no idea if a transaction is adding value to anyone or sucking both resources & consumers dry, much less maximizing for both sides, is what puts it beyond the pale as something workable in the real world. I remember a story about Soviet policy at one point allowing collectivist farms to meet their quotas by buying goods at local stores, just so you can put the same goods back into the same stores at the same price with a massive pointless waste of time & energy packed in for no good reason except blind ideology ... Takes about 2 seconds of rational thinking to see how economically messed up that is.
jay pettitt on 5/7/2012 at 21:19
Quote Posted by heywood
I was speaking of climategate and in particular the famous words "hide the decline" that skeptics jumped at as an Aha, Gotcha! moment. It didn't change the scientific consensus, but it planted a seed of mistrust and doubt in the non-scientific public's mind that helped stall progress in addressing climate change. You can look at what happened and say it's all just the stupid public falling for the deniers' spin, but I think it was also true that some scientists lost their objectivity and put a public policy objective above frank and open sharing of information. They got sucked into a propaganda war because they felt it was important to take action.
I think it doesn't actually matter. Scientists are human too - some will have a policy interest, some won't. That's true of any field and I don't see that it was especially problematic for climate science. One hopes that publishing, peer review, time and replication will do a fair job of sorting it all out in the end.
Not that that makes any difference to the public perception of Climate Science, but I suspect that folk will get fatigued by 'hide the decliners' and notice the science hasn't actually gone away before very long. If that isn't happening already.
jay pettitt on 5/7/2012 at 21:41
Quote Posted by demagogue
I'd by sympathetic with a theory that one of the biggest evils in modern governance is the concentration of power, in governments, societies, cultures, or corporations.
But the whole thing about taking transactions out of an open market & shoving them in a black box so you can't have open negotiations or real price signals, you have no idea if a transaction is adding value to
anyone or sucking both resources & consumers dry, much less maximizing for both sides, is what puts it beyond the pale as something workable in the real world. I remember a story about Soviet policy at one point allowing collectivist farms to meet their quotas by buying goods at local stores, just so you can put the same goods back into the same stores at the same price with a massive pointless waste of time & energy packed in for no good reason except blind ideology ... Takes about 2 seconds of rational thinking to see how economically messed up that is.
At the same time pounds and pence aren't standard index units. And Marketing distorts markets further still.
Apparently in Europe they tend to think of markets being a sliding scale with free and unwieldy neoliberal love children at one end and planned communist dictatorship blood baths at the other. Between the two are various degrees of economic coordination between state and markets - which seems to me like a more useful way of looking at things than a good/evil dichotomy think that some people seem to end up stuck in.
Nicker on 5/7/2012 at 22:16
Quote Posted by faetal
I'm not convinced
true communism is possible outside of theory, simply because power invariably corrupts.
Ditto for
true capitalism. Invariable every ...ism or ...anity falls prey to human predation and criminality. Communism has its fascist oligarchs and capitalism has its robber barons. We seem to be hard wired for aristocracy.
Communism is a system where criminal elements in the government control industry, whereas in Capitalism the opposite is true. (Actually the criminals invariable migrate throughout both infrastructures.)
Ideology might be more accurately rendered as idealology.
demagogue on 5/7/2012 at 22:22
@Jay, Yeah I'm not a libertarian either. I'm totally on board that you need regulation and state control and there are market distortions or limits everywhere where you don't want to trust the unadulterated market at all ... negative externalities, bargaining power disparities, cognitive biases, cartels & monopolies & natural monopolies, boom & bust cycles, public goods, free rider & tragedy of the commons... Fine balance there between giving companies latitude to grow, rationally controlling them, and not being totally in bed with them.
Jason Moyer on 6/7/2012 at 00:35
I always thought Communism actually reduced corruption since it puts a palace in each of your cities.
Slasher on 6/7/2012 at 01:01
I thought they changed it so communism would distribute corruption equally to all your cities, regardless of their distance from your palace, as opposed to eliminating it altogether.
CCCToad on 6/7/2012 at 02:30
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I always thought Communism actually reduced corruption since it puts a palace in each of your cities.
Communism reduces corruption by not calling it corruption.
Kolya on 6/7/2012 at 06:05
Quote Posted by Nicker
Communism is a system where criminal elements in the government control industry, whereas in Capitalism the opposite is true. (Actually the criminals invariable migrate throughout both infrastructures.)
*claps*
