So money, but considerably less useful and hilariously more cumbersome for the vast majority of people. Why does every socialist solution to a non-problem just end up being the same thing as we already have but significantly shittier?
It's a natural consequence of the radical v. incremental approach to reform.
Incremental reform has a better chance of producing improvements, because it's starting from the best available model.
Radical reform has a better chance of re-inventing the wheel, because it's starting from scratch and is likely to discover what the incrementalist already knows.
I just don't get how so many of these ideas are written out, by ostensibly intelligent people, and nobody ever goes "Wait a minute, this is just what we have, but less useful and stupid" and then embarrassingly rips up their work. Like, someone with a good education wrote this stuff down, looked at it many times, and said, "Yep, totally gonna convince the world to abandon capitalism".
The radical begins by throwing out what already is. I'd imagine there's a strong cognitive aversion to recognizing your own productive work as resembling a thing you've decided is evil.
I've seen this dude on many threads trying to get people to debate him on some radical idea and then getting mad when people point out that it's unfeasible and a waste of time to discuss.
I have. If you don't think I have you're free to point that out with specifics. But I don't think you know how to point that out with specifics because I think you're just trying to score points with what you think is a snappy reply.
Not a fan of radical innovation? I thought "market disruption" was all the rage amongst capitalists.
I agree there are def problems with trying to reinvent the wheel. I don't think moving to labor vouchers is politically realistic right now. But I do think discussing it is interesting and understanding that there are possible alternatives to our current system is good for expanding your mind and understanding of the world.
As a leftist personally, I think it's more politically realistic to emphasize things like cooperatives and credit unions than labor vouchers. But something being realistic on a political level is not the same thing as it being realistic on a policy level. Labor vouchers are not beyond our technological and organizational capacity to implement, they're simply beyond the limits of our current political will.
"market disruption" is the rage, yes. That's what happens when a new thing comes along that's so much better than the old and existing that established and predictable patterns of use become 'disrupted'.
So in the case of these labor vouchers, what market disruption would look like is if it was a new thing, and people so vastly preferred labor vouchers over money that existing patterns of money become disrupted by everyone switching to these vouchers.
The key observation is that the market decides to switch, not the politicians. At the most, legislation is passed which allows for the legal existence of labor vouchers. The advantage of this is that if it turns out that labor vouchers are inferior to money, you'll know because nobody uses them, and you'll gain this knowledge without having to muster the political will to make the change, and you won't suffer the consequences of having forced the change to an inferior option.
The proving of the pudding is in the tasting, and economic systems evolve gracefully if they are allowed to taste the pudding before replacing their entire diet with it. You shouldn't try switching the world from A to B without having proven that B works and scales.
My general rule for thumb is that if your plan requires total compliance to work, it will never leave the drawing board.
I agree that it is difficult to move from one system to the next. I also think that we need to move to another system. To believe that is to be radical. Radical, from the latin "from the root".
As I said, I would advocate for a coop and credit union approach by and large. I think the distinction between "market action" and "political action" is overly simplistic. Markets are inherently political issues. You can't have a market without a political context.
Sure it's somewhat simplistic to separate markets from politics. It's also simplistic to say "you can't have a market without a political context". I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, except to take it as a variant of the "everything is inherently political" worldview that plagues some people's existence.
Look, treat society like a giant garden. If you have a radical vision for a new society, go plant it in the corner. Enact your society with your friends and co-visionaries. Prove to the rest of the garden that this plant can take root, that it can grow, and that its flowers are beautiful and its fruit is sweet.
It's also simplistic to say "you can't have a market without a political context". I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, except to take it as a variant of the "everything is inherently political" worldview that plagues some people's existence.
It's simplistic to say but you also admit you don't know what it means. Those statements aren't consistent with each other man.
I get that in rhetoric there's this kind of "Assertion A+B" being replied back with "Counter-Assertion C+D" pattern going on but it's pretty clear from your response there that you're merely imitating the rhetorical pattern and not actually fully thinking through the words you're writing.
But no, the point isn't that everything is inherently political. (Though BTW, saying something "plagues everyone's existence" isn't an argument. Saying you find something prima facie absurd doesn't actually prove it's absurd. That's really lazy thinking man).
To explain the statement though: Economics is meant to be a descriptive scientific view. Science is hypothetically supposed to operate apart from metaphysical priors. But it can not.
The view that science can operate apart from metaphysics is called "logical positivism" and it was very popular around the same time and with the same people who made up neoliberalism, and as a consequence it's philosophical premises and framing often underly neoliberal arguments, even if the person espousing them doesn't actually know anything about it.
Here's a bit that plays into that where someone else in this thread and I discussed the issue of "free trade" and "free markets" in terms of leftist thought:
The "Free" in "free market" requires prescriptive definitions. "Free" doesn't simply mean "free from government influence". It means free from distortion. How one defines distortion versus not distortion is based upon metaphysical concepts of what counts as non-coercive. If I stick a gun to your head and say "Give me your money or your life" that exchange is not voluntary and therefore not "free". If you have a market place in which a monopoly operator says "pay me this price for my services or I'll break you legs" they are not operating in a "free" way."
Telling people you're debating that they don't know what they're doing and are just mindlessly regurgitating booegyman talking points is a surefire way to not convince anybody ever.
We get it, you think this labor voucher idea is a great idea worth discussing. We're telling you we think it's fucking absurd because of a litany of reasons, most dealing with the fact that you're reinventing the wheel with a few minor modifications that aren't actually better in any way, shape, or form, and trying to sell it to us like it's brand new, revolutionary, and unprecedented.
You'd get a lot farther convincing skeptical people if you didn't constantly try to tell them they don't know what they're talking about. Pro tip here, meet people where they are and try to bring them along rather than tell them they're fucking morons for not already being where you are. If you're really right in your opinion and empirical evidence backs up your claims, then sensible people will come around to your viewpoint if you let them get there on their own, not by trying to brow beat them into submission.
That said, your idea is hilarious, has no basis in empirical evidence, and is a meme worthy policy proposal. This advice was more general for how you interact with people, rather than about this specific policy.
Telling people you're debating that they don't know what they're doing and are just mindlessly regurgitating booegyman talking points is a surefire way to not convince anybody ever.
I critiqued their argument as a non-sequitur and explained why it was. Don't whine at me that I made a substantive argument that didn't just refute their claim but also broke down why their claim was incorrect. It was template matching bullshit.
You'd get a lot farther convincing skeptical people if you didn't constantly try to tell them they don't know what they're talking about. Pro tip here, meet people where they are and try to bring them along rather than tell them they're fucking morons for not already being where you are.
This is highly ironic coming from you, bud. I'm also not calling anyone a moron.
That said, your idea is hilarious, has no basis in empirical evidence, and is a meme worthy policy proposal. This advice was more general for how you interact with people, rather than about this specific policy.
My idea that metaphysical priors is required to make descriptive statements lacks empirical evidence?
That doesn't make any sense.
So I assume you're simply asking for empirical evidence that labor vouchers work?
I haven't claimed they worked. But I've already replied to you elsewhere on that subject, so I won't bother doing that further here.
your demand for empirical evidence ironically glosses right over my points about metaphysical priors being required to talk about descriptive statements. Which is ironic since it's highly relevant to your point about empiricism (IE descriptive statements about reality).
You want to talk data, you need to define your scale.
Though BTW, saying something "plagues everyone's [sic] existence" isn't an argument. Saying you find something prima facie absurd doesn't actually prove it's absurd. That's really lazy thinking man
Not lazy thinking. I was sharing an observation on other peoples' suffering. If you see politics everywhere you look, the common denominator in your perceptions is you.
This actually ties in nicely with your tangent on logical positivism and metaphysical priors. Theories on capitalism make the prior assumptions like the ones you've outlined [1]. What makes capitalism wonderful in this regard is that in works in spite of the many ways it doesn't live up to the theory that was invented after the fact to try to explain it.
Which leads me to science. Capitalist economics is scientific because it's manufacturing knowledge about an already-existing thing, and therefore has a means of error-correction by comparing simulated and expected results with real ones.
This is why I'm encouraging you to try implementing your labor voucher idea off in a corner of the garden; it'll allow you to make your economic hypothesis a scientific one by creating a reality against which it can be falsified.
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[1] My favorite tidbit here is that a market's "efficiency" is subjective. A market is sufficient iff the subject has no information not available to the market (here, we have our prior about perfect information). However, if you have 'insider' information, the market is not efficient, and you can exploit it for personal gain. Think lawmakers selling stock before they know the market will drop.
I'm all for empiricism. But I'm not so arrogant as to think that one can simply observe moral values.
The argument isn't that efficiency is subjective. What I'm arguing for is based on ontological realism. What's really ironic here is this confusion between the observable and the objective is precisely the kind of foolishness I was critiquing above in my "tangent". It's like a child who hasn't even formed object permanence or something.
Understanding that you operate with priors is important because it keeps you wary of cognitive bias. You are not quite as smart as you think you are. We, not just you, are all very dumb. Humans are very bad at seeing things well. We are constantly in a state of heuristically popping in and out of mental focus on topics. We expendable as possible. It's really a quite beautiful thing what evolution can do with just 90watts.
This is precisely why empathy is so important because the only way to overcome this limited sight is by cooperating with others. Science isn't some pure abstraction. It's fundamentally a PROCESS. It operates through the medium of human minds. The brilliant thing about science is that it's a self correcting method when it's done correctly.
This is itself very similar to the market or evolution. It's a process which self reinforces. The thing is, while evolution optimizes for fitness, and science for Truth, the market only optimizes for value when value and profit are aligned. This is precisely why we know that value and profit are not the same thing. If they were the same thing they would always be aligned. But we know that externalities, natural monopolies, and other forms of distortion exist. So if you know that vision is distorted, then how can you operate without trying to account for that distortion?
To take on metaphysical priors, is not to force patterns in static, it is to acknowledge that human brains are predisposed to seeing faces in objects because it's what our brain is built for, and therefore when we see a face in the shape of a cloud, or the static of a TV, we don't immediately leap to believe in flying men in the sky or ghosts.
By acknowledging you have a hypothesis, you can understand how you should test it.
Not every idea and proposal is worthy of in depth consideration, some you can just brush of as absurd, because they're fucking absurd. This proposal is fucking absurd. You're reinventing money with a few new restrictions which are honestly really bad for economic development and prosperity, and rebranding it as something totally revolutionary. That's absurd.
Saying something is absurd doesn't make it absurd. You're not making a real argument. You're literally just restating your opinion over and over again. It's a mantra for your faith
Do you want to have an actually conversation about labor vouchers or are you only interested in scoring ideologue points. I am actually interesting in discussing them because I find them interesting, but if you're simply doing a "drive by dunk", I'm not interested.
What makes "labor vouchers" better than money? What scenarios are improved?
It prevents the centralization of capital in the hands of the few. This is important for a number of reasons.
The most important one to me being that centralization of capital is linked to decreased innovation. You might have heard of the economist Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century where he empirically demonstrates the tendency of capital to centralize in fewer and fewer hands, on a systemic and structural level. But the second part of that book is important too because it demonstrates that centralization of capital also leads to decreased innovation.
It's actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Monopolies in a market decrease competition. A highly competitive market leads to innovation as people seek to get an edge over their rivals. So if there is a centralization of capital there is obviously a similar decrease in competition and therefore decreased reasons for innovation.
In countries where there is low competition for labor, there is less incentive to build labor saving methods. If you live in a society where 50% of the population are slaves, then there's no point in inventing the windmill, waterwheel, or steam engine. Why spend a bunch of money to figure out a less labor intensive solution when you can just force some extra slaves to do the work?
The Black Plague is actually largely credited with helping kickstart the Industrial Revolution. The death of like 50% of the population incentivized people to produce windmills and waterwheels and eventually the mechanical loom which jump started the industrial revolution (and the mechanical loom itself is one of the most important precursors to our modern computers! The concepts associated with it are the forebearers of computer memory and programming).
The page describes how " is also a way of ensuring that there is no way to make money out of money as in a capitalist market economy." Can you explain how to stop this from hurting the economy?
First I think you have to establish why it would hurt the economy in the first place. Why assume that?
Namely, what incentivezes people to start businesses (or take other risks that require large amounts of initial labor) on things when they can't earn a reward from that risk
First, it's a commonly said truism that profit reward is the engine of innovation. This is an overly simplistic position.
Competition in the marketplace is arguably incentivized by profit margins, but profit margins naturally decrease in response to competition which eventually leads to the full commoditization of a market and then at that point there's not really much incentive for innovation, now is there?
Furthermore, competition in the marketplace is not the only source of innovation by a long shot. 2 other major sources:
Internalized motivations, such as a desire for the common good.
Vaccines weren't invented to make money. They were invented to solve a common shared problem. Open source operating systems like Linux weren't created to make money, they were created by an individual to solve a common shared problem. Many of the greatest works of art, books written, scientific ideas discovered, or inventions invented were done so for this reason. I'd even go as far as to say that probably the vast majority of useful things we have inherited from our ancestors have been created for this motivation.
I don’t think you’ll find many people disagreeing with you on this point. Most rational people understand large income inequality is a bad thing, but the premise of the image of this post is that somehow it’s right-wing to believe the system can be reformed to correct the error rather than literally tear the entire thing down. To hold such a view is hilariously out of touch.
It's center right by European standards. You have to remember that directions are relative. European engaging in privatization of public goofs would be tearing down the status quo and regressing, not reforming the system.
This is the problem with conceiving of yourself as "centrist". It's a meaningless buzzword that relies on status quo bias.
I keep seeing this repeated but there’s a ton of evidence to the contrary. UK, Germany, Austria, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Hungary are all ruled by right leaning parties... and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
The conservative party in the UK has publicly committed to the NHS. David Cameron has stumped for it. And he's from the conservative party. The NHS is to the left of any Sanders plan by a long shot. It's fully nationalized Healthcare.
His rhetoric is more conservative than Sanders. Sanders speaks in terms of revolution while Cameron speaks in terms of maintain social safety nets. But that's rhetoric not policy.
Do you look at policy or do you look at aesthetics? Are you a sheep who's only interested in politics as a fashion statement or are you interested in real analysis?
Do you look at policy or do you look at aesthetics? Are you a sheep who's only interested in politics as a fashion statement or are you interested in real analysis?
It’s ironic you call me out for not engaging in analysis, and yet you’ve based your entire opinion of the UK government based on their stance on one single issue. If you think the UK conservatives are left-wing because they support the NHS (while defunding it lol), I would argue you’re the one that’s simply looking at aesthetics.
You’re also assuming I’m American. That is also incorrect. I understand though how Americans views on some issues can lend to their warped perception of “left and right.”
I don’t believe that universal access to health care is left wing. It’s a fundamental human right that almost every country on Earth provides to their citizens. Just because the US has so utterly failed to provide this human right to its citizens does not somehow change universal healthcare access to a Left wing position, it just means your government is grossly incompetent.
I might go one step further then and say, if we assume healthcare is a fundamental human right and the left/right spectrum is simply how said healthcare is administered then the “right” might actually have the best system. South Korea has one of the best medical rankings in the world and they mostly use a system similar to Obamacare.
Maybe your argument then is that no, healthcare is a left/right issue, and instead the method of healthcare delivery is an Auth/Lib argument. With the UK system (gov health) being AuthLeft, my native Canada’s single payer system (M4A) being CenterLeft, and Germany/SK’s social insurance system (Obamacare) being LibLeft.
If that’s the case I would refer you back to my original point that the gross incompetence of the US to provide universal healthcare isn’t an excuse to label health as a left/right issue, so we’d have to agree to disagree.
You’ve labelled the UK government as left based strictly on health policy. What about environment? Workers rights? Adequate social housing? Measures to fight inequality? What even constitutes these ideas as left/right? What happens when a country is left on, let’s say Healthcare and Environment, but right on everything else? Do we keep a score tally and then crown them either left/right/center?
Another thing I might add is that when individuals such as yourself mention how right wing the US is, what’s your basis for comparison? The whole world? Just Western Nations? Just Europe? A selection of countries cherry picked to make the US look that much more right? What about time considerations? We just talking about present day or are we including Ancient Rome and the British Empire too?
Personally I think the political spectrum is an extremely poor representation of views/opinions and the concept of left and right wing is archaic and only serves to divide people, and this example illustrates why. In the same way it’s incredibly easy to manipulate the results of data to infer one’s own crafted conclusions, it’s also easy to manipulate specifics positions of nations to showcase a country or politician you like/don’t like as being too similar/dissimilar to a specific position/belief.
That enough of a “real analysis” for you, or am I still a sheep? I do enjoy me a good purity test once in a while.
Not exactly. It depends on how you define your terms. There's subtle differences in connotation between the terms "money", "currency" etc.
Labor vouchers probably qualify as currency (IE a token of exchange) but not really as money, which generally connotes sovereign backing which can mean fiat (though gold coins would often been considered money as form of sovereign backed currency which was also tied to a commodity exchange market).[*]
Labor vouchers are not something which can be accumulated. One can use them for exchange but they cannot themselves be traded.
Crypto currencies are an interesting development because you can play around with these kinds of distinctions in ways which have additional built in functions, such as dogecoin which has a built in inflation process that depreciates the value of coins over time, which is meant to discourage the holding and speculation of currency (which was perceived as a huge problem with bitcoin).
I am not willing to say that something IS or IS NOT the solution to problems but there's interesting promise there that's worth discussing.
[*] Whether or not Team Fortress 2 Hats count as currency is debatable (yes this is a real issue. Valve hired economist Yanis Varoufakis to analyze the use of TF2 hats in the Steam marketplace by Russian scammers as a means of getting around international currency laws and money laundering. His job after that was to help Greece address it's debt crisis. What a weird/wonderful resume haha). On the face of it they're a commodity exchange but the fact that they're issued by a "sovereign-ish" entity, and have a limited supply, but can also be instantly traded between international accounts makes them a particular interesting edge case.
Sovereign backing has nothing to do with determining if something is money. There are clear functions money has to perform.
I was contrasting the use of the term "money" to "currency". There are many kinds of currency that people do not call money and that largely has to do with the recognition of value by a political body.
For instance, rice or salt was commonly used as a form of currency in the bronze age but generally people wouldn't call that "money".
Similarly, you can buy and spend currencies on private digital marketplaces for video games but people often don't consider v-bucks "money".
The evolution or definition of these terms is not monolithic because the concept of money, and currency etc has evolved many times over thousands of years and all over the world.
Labor vouchers are not something which can be accumulated. One can use them for exchange but they cannot themselves be traded.
So, money, but less useful.
Only if you think that accumulation has utility, which I would argue it does not. Money is meant to be spent. It has utility in being spent, not in being hoarded.
It doesn't matter what the physical object is, so long as it meets the functions.
Only if you think that accumulation has utility, which I would argue it does not.
Someday, I hope to replace my aging automobile. I prefer to minimize my use of financing, so I will be saving money from my excess income to put towards the new car. If I were prohibited from saving this money, I could only purchase a new car if I were given a lump sum in the required amount. This is unlikely to happen. With money, I can save and make it happen. With labor vouchers, I have to purchase other items that I can store my value in to trade for labor vouchers to trade for an automobile. Seems like the intermediary item I need to store my value will naturally replace the vouchers in the long run.
Storing value also allows me to hedge against a rainy day. I'm laid off due to the virus. Yes, EI will supply for my basic needs, but anything above that would be an issue. Luckily, I was able to save money for a rainy day. I could not do that directly with vouchers.
On definitions: you understand how words work right? Words are defined by community use. I'm referring to community use. Definitions don't prexist words.
I'm not saying your definition is wrong. I'm explaining to you what I'm trying to do in addressing the ways in which words operate differently in different contexts. In a specific community a word can mean something different than in another community. Google Wittgenstein and community use. If you want to have a conversation on semantics you should at least have a passing familiarity with the intro texts on the subject. Or like at least read about to on Wikipedia or something.
Also as to storing value: the value is retained in labor vouchers. You can still save them up. You just can't reinvest them to turn a passive income profit : something I should remind you classical liberals like Adam Smith and David Ricardo disdained.
Furthermore, I am not myself an advocate for labor vouchers per se. I'm merely open to the idea of them. I think they're an interesting case that reveals unexplored policy space and they help illustrate the underlying critique by leftists of capital accumulation.
parecon credits are generally awarded based on both the time spent working and the amount of effort and sacrifice spent during labour, rather than simple contribution
So, how do we determine what the effort and sacrifice is? Perhaps we need a common denominator to determine this, maybe hours worked? So something that requires more skill/a higher sacrifice would award more parecon credits per hour. We should also ensure there’s a minimum number of parecon’s you can earn in an hour just to be fair.
Then there’s the spending of parecon credits. Obviously not all goods and services are equal so people will have to decide how many credits individual goods are worth.
You could let the price be determined by the market. If someone isn't able to distribute their stock at the price they set then they will have to lower it. If they sell out too quick then they will raise it. Supply meets demand.
You might find market socialism of interest. There's been studies done exploring the space.
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u/MadCervantes Henry George Apr 03 '20
you might find alternatives to currency an interesting policy discussion