The Impending Death of Modern Capitalism

5) How do prisons work? Nutnut wants remove public vehicles. If the current laws allow me to drive my pickup around, how are the laws going to change with a minority of support in a supposed horizontal hierarchical system of the people?

6) There isn't a lot of modern day successful full communist regimes, most have adopted capitalistic policies that aren't approved of here. What is convincing you that your ideas will yeild different results enough to warrant making this change?

7) With the private sector gone, how will the govt rely on foreign loans and increasing revenue to fund green energy programs that seem to be the most important reason to go full communist? Or without using money if thats whats going to happen.

8) An incredibly large percentage of folks own a home. Can they live in that home and just have it owned by the state or are they being moved?

5) I dunnow, I'm not a prison expert. I do know that it's pretty ethically suspect to criminalize your population in order to obtain cheap labour. Stop doing that. Drive your pickup around to your heart's content. Trying to reverse the climate crisis by encouraging individual consumers to consume less isn't going to do the trick, it has to be the big corporations and militaries and governments. While consumption plays a part in all this, it's not on its own enough to stop that. As to how laws are going to change.... that's a gigantic question. Possibly either get more specific, or less.

6) My studies of anthropology, history, economics, psychology, and ecology.

7a) Private sectors of sorts can and will still exist by necessity, at least for a while. Thought experiment: Alon has a gigantic unobtainium farm, but currently we've collectively got plenty more unobtainium than we need when we start this whole transition. We've arrived at a place where there's broad enough agreement to start an economic transition, and we're getting to the terms of it. Many rich people are understandably upset at having to give away much of what they perceive as their life's work. In order to keep some of them happy we say 'if we as a society don't need this thing right now, you go ahead and keep it and let's revisit this in 10 years'. Given that we still need unobtainium, but there's other priorities in how to go about reorienting our economy, Alon can and should keep on pumping out unobtainium, and on a for profit basis, as long as he's not taking the piss (assuming that he doesn't have a monopoly supply).

b) Funding green energy programs isn't the point. Using less is the point. You don't need foreign loans to start using less. Say Blon has a lot of money and a lavish lifestyle but finds out he's about to go broke. What does he do? He starts having a less lavish lifestyle. That's the thrust of the change I'm proposing.

8) Within reason, probably yes. Communism subordinated to national jingoism and aggression and tainted by corruption and without majority support nor effective common ownership of the means of production is no communism at all. It's worth noting that Russia today is... subordinated to national jingoism and aggression and tainted by corruption and without majority support nor effective common ownership of the means of production, almost like that's the default Russian state of affairs, almost like racism is the default American state of affairs. A state that comes in and deletes a village and absconds half a population to the gulags is not a representative democracy. Socialism is defined by local representation. Glory to communism is not a good enough reason to enact state capitalism (the state has control of capital / production and uses it to generate more capital), a reign of terror, and murder your citizens en masse.

Again, it's worth doing thought experiments. We're in or planning our economic transition. We want to target both overproduction and artificial scarcity as drivers of homelessness and make use of our resources. What do we do? We target private ownership of the location of reproduction (my own silly joke, i.e. the bedroom) for profit. You want to own the home that you or a family member lives in? The state should never (probably) want to steal that from you. It's not going to steal it from you then charge you rent. In the UK there are currently 250k long-term empty houses, and 350k people homeless or in short-term accomodation. These are remarkably easy solutions that simply require political will. These empty homes aren't even generating income - they're just speculative.

Let's remember that fundamentally, economics is fictional / based on communal subjectivity. For a $ to be worth something requires us all to agree. The state of any market is little more than 'what we all think about it'. Currently, our housing market operates under the collective fiction that it's a good thing to have so many homeless and empty houses. We have the freedom to set our collective economic consciousness how we like. If we like no homeless, we can *just do that*, with every piece of evidence out there suggesting that would be a good thing overall for society, and for all the individuals in it, in a material way, without any costs. Low-hanging fruit that is out of reach because rich people want to see that fruit fall to the ground.

Let's remember that fundamentally, economics is fictional / based on communal subjectivity. For a $ to be worth something requires us all to agree.

Your studies of anthropology. history and economics failed you miserably here.

You don't need everybody to agree about the value of the $ for the $ to be worth something, you only need a state with guns to force you to use $ to pay taxes, for the $ to be worth something.

9) Will people be able to leave this country freely or is it going to be more like North Korea? I know you hate this word but what are the incentives for people to stay as opposed to them leaving to Canada or Europe or Japan?

10) Waht's happening with professional sports? They make a lot of money and they aren't very high on the list of either necessities or environmentally friendly. DO they get a pay cut or are they banned?

11) How does gambling work? Casinos? State run casinos? Sports betting?

12) How do we handle the laziness for the people who dont want to work when all their needs are going to be provided?

9) Completely free movement. Incentive to stay is increased quality of life.

10) Keep them all. You can keep basically all of it. You got a shop or small business that sells and/or makes specialist equipment? Keep it! You want to play sports for a living? You can keep doing so! Probably not at the same silly wages they all get, but sports and games are a fundamental part of human nature and we're always going to want to see the unstoppable force up against the immovable object.

11) Well, when you know the risk of a thing happening, and you can compare the odds of that thing happening with what you're risking versus what you might get out of it, you can find out if you have a good bet to make. Casinos work on this principle, offering punters a few percentage points under their expectation per 'go' - but the wild swings are appealing to punters anyway. State run casinos operate under the same principle. I'm not a sports betting expert - I've won maybe 5 out of the 30 bets I've made lifetime - but one difference between sports betting in a capitalist economy and in a socialist economy is ///footage not found///

12) We'll get by just fine making sure they're all well-fed. There's more than enough to go round, barring famines. I'm sure I could find you stats unequivocally showing that, given population densities in the past and the ginormous increases in land productivity, without artificial scarcity on food we could easily feed every single person on this planet with less effort than we're currently expending. Freeloaders (or the free rider problem) have been with us for the entirety of our history. The mark of civilization is arguably when we see the first healed leg break, signaling that the tribe took care of a disabled person. Children are freeloaders, as are old people, as are sick people; the small number of people who naturally just want to play call of duty and get high and nothing else is vanishingly small. Humans are naturally highly industrious and the profit motive is a weak one. We like working in community; we don't much like just sitting on our fat arses all day doing nothing while everyone else works. Well, a very small proportion of people might, but if there's work that needs doing, as part of a community, most people like to contribute.

Right now, you're dragging. Keep up the pace, we've got 484 left to go

13) Will buying and selling via bitcoin be allowed?

14) How is a central authority going to estimate the needs of individuals across the country without the market signals of a market based economy? If it's community driven, are they setting prices?

15) are family owned restaurants and general brick and mortar stores allowed, and would they be allowed to offer prices below what the state offers for the same item?

16) Do you envision a possibility for a much higher demand for a black market and could that be controlled with a minority of support?

13) The list of things that won't be allowed is not a big one and there's too many things so I'm not going to answer any more 'is this allowed' questions I'm afraid

14) Central planning, using price signals and experimentation. Just because an economy doesn't centre around the market doesn't mean the market can't be an efficient method for allocating resources. All it takes is to say that the market no longer serves the purpose of capital accumulation and instead serves the purpose of human welfare. Market signals can be as primitive as 'I'm full!' or 'I'm very hungry!'. Currently we do in fact have a highly centrally-planned and regulated economy - but those plans and regulations are in favour of big business. It's not as if we even live in real capitalism where the market is left to its own devices - no, the market is made primal in our lives, requires reinforcement by the state. All we do is just reinforce the mechanisms that prevent abuse of consumers by corporations. If you want low-hanging fruit, beef up antitrust and at least threaten to break up big tech.

15) No. family owned restaurants for some reason are OUT. straight to jail. i don't like the idea of families having restaurants. families? fine. restaurants? fine. their admixture is a holy sin and I will personally be rounding up any families I suspect of harbouring restaurants. i mean, the hubris! if they can afford to undercut the state while maintaining minimal quality and not exploiting anyone in the supply chain then i see no reason to force them to reduce their prices.

16) Maybe, I don't know, nor do I have easy answers for how to avoid that, but I'm fairly confident that within the realm of left wing academia someone has a good answer for policy that minimizes the harms of black and grey markets. Are there not black and grey markets existing already under capitalism? Haven't both parties been busy funnelling dark money for their campaigns? How much oversight is there on military spending with private military companies? Does capitalism ensure that those goods traded on the legitimate market are always at a fair price and of the quality you expect?

Ask me a weird question, like 'do women have better sex under socialism' or something like that.

That's fair, no more "is it allowed" questions.

I honestly don't know if you're being sarcastic after some of the demands put forth by others but I assume you mean raise their prices?

If you're allowing some people in the private sector to compete for better prices, use of currencies, professional sports for profits, free movement, trade, how is this not just a more regulated form of capitalism?

I also don't think nutnut is in favor of anything that you are personally going to approve.

No, I'm never sarcastic. Not my style. Also never joke. Straight to jail.

I'm literally proposing a more regulated form of capitalism - socialism. Where that takes us, who knows. Maybe a generation down the line we'll upgrade to full communism, maybe we won't. That part is less necessary, more unknowable, and more of a stretch to convince than just enacting the low hanging fruit and tamping down the worst excesses of capitalism here and now.

A revolution needn't be violent. If the revolution can happen in our collective consciousness, please let's get that going.

Don't you worry about nutnut. Like the church and big business fell in line in 1933, and like how it's doing in 2025, if major socialist reform is on the ticket, he'll fall in line and vote too. If they have to accept some private ownership, temporary competition from private industry and casinos and (gasp!) even family restaurants in exchange for genuine democratic representation, fair distribution and ownership of resources, and the knowledge that we're all living within planetary boundaries, they and every other leftist I respect would bite your hands off.

If they won't, on principle, then they likely constitute a big answer to the question 'why is the left failing?' Some leftists think money, markets and the economy are fundamentally evil and unredeemable, but I've got about 10 books on monetary theory I'd happily point them to. For now, while both are essentially impossible, a gradual socialist revolution through democratic means is about 10x likelier and involving less bloodshed than a violent one. False consciousness is the blockage behind both.

The thing about marxism is that it was meant to be scientific. If socialists refuse to acknowledge basic facts like raising wages raises prices and more housing supply leads to lower costs, they really aren’t fit to run a country. We (meaning social democrats) need more pragmatism from them if they want to be taken seriously.

Im asking if you would force them to raise prices. The private restaurant has a much better avenue to keep prices lower than a state run for what should be some quite obv reasons.

If they are able to operate, more locally and environmentally friendly measures and use their advantages of eliminating food waste, would you be okay with it or is it just a concrete no, no matter what?

I think throwing folks in jail for something that would actually benefit what the communists are demanding seems a bit strange. but you're starting to get closer to nutnut at least.

you think you are a social democrat but if you lived in an European country you would be a normal center right person

The state is not in the business of forcing food suppliers to raise their prices. The state is in the business of making sure everyone gets fed. The price will reflect supply and demand. If the state suddenly took it on itself to resolve homelessness, it wouldn't legislate that landlords should raise rents.

that’s because many parts of europe
are already social democratic no? so of course I would be nominally in the center if not center right because of my pragmatism towards fossil fuels and market regulations.

if you just wanted everyone to get fed why deny that the private sector is exceptionally better at growing and distributing food than the state can ever be, and simply let it do it, while giving money to everyone to buy food?

because you have conflicting goals.

you want as much food as possible as cheap as possible IN THEORY, but in practice you want to "avoid workers being exploited", which doesn't mean anything in reality, which becomes pampering to low productivity workers overpaying them compared to their actual contributions, and making food scarcer and pricer for everyone.

if the state wants to solve homelessness and that's the only goal, it makes it easier to build houses (deregulation) and then buys them, as many as necessary to house everyone.

but that's not the goal. you don't want the homeless in the most expensive areas of the country housed somewhere with decency .

you want them housed THERE, where they are homeless, as if a human right to decide where to live existed, as if the most sought after olaces in the whole country where "available to everyone".

you simply deny your contradictory goals and everything else that comes out of it is just random trash

Can you elaborate on this because this is rather contradictory. The state has to control, ration or monopolize the price somehow or else you've got starving people or empty shelves.

How are you operating under supply and demand when it literally removes competition and determines supply. Does it get text messages that shitville US is short on flour and the get to work? Whats your edge over the SU or Mao's attempt at it?

Then get rid of consumer credit. That will go a long way toward reducing both. That's the problem the proponents of democracy skip over. It's almost like they believe if people live in a democracy they'll by some miracle suddenly begin making decisions that are in their best long-term interests. And the same goes for taking all the money from the rich and power hungry. They're not changing their spots. They'll just satisfy their lust for power through political office of some sort. I'd rather have fewer of them having legal power over me, not more. Not a deal breaker but democracy/socialism needs plenty of fettering too.

It's not true that I want to remove PUBLIC vehicles. I want to remove most private vehicles.

With self-driving cars, you can just order a public EV to come get you and take you where you need to go. If you're going on a road trip, then you reserve a vehicle for as long as needed.

If someone is driving 10,000 miles a year at an average speed of 30 miles per hour, that's 330 hours a year of driving or 14 days out of 365. The car is sitting idle 96% of the time. We don't need everyone to have their own car and pay their own insurance and maintenance. It's extraordinarily inefficient.

Absolutely NOT.

The electricity footprint of a bitcoin transaction is something like 1,000,000x a standard debit / credit transaction.

What does bitcoin do for society besides consume electricity ? Does it increase food supply ? No. Does it improve medical care ? No.

It's a completely superfluous activity which adds an incredible amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. It should be banned forthwith.

Why do we need money ? In 4 billion years of life on Earth, money has really only existed for about 5,000 years. We can live without it.

The nitty-gritty gets complicated and the solutions will look very different according to the exact type of market, but consider the current existence of private suppliers existing alongside public suppliers, in healthcare, education, security and so on. There is no reason this can't happen for food, and in fact does happen for food. Price signals still function absolutely fine, but in a centrally-planned market, they're not the only thing that's taken into account and the state will raise or lower its prices according to those price signals and whatever other key information is at hand. Instead of saying 'price signals & overproduction & artificial scarcity' we say 'price signals & safeguards to ensure no one goes hungry'.

Consider what happens when you have a privately owned corporation whose motive is profit operating under similar conditions to and alongside a people-owned corporation. Assuming this competition is fair, where exactly does the competitive advantage come from? If it's a willingness to cut corners, well, let's try to stop that, but that will generally come back to bite them eventually.

The motivation to serve the people is a more wholesome and long-term incentive than the prospect of having more money and therefore power than your peers. It's what happens when everyone in a society gets behind everyone else - like national unity, but international. All questions along the lines of 'what will motivate people to X' are answerable on the basis it's within their motivations anyway and a more fair system will see more people happily contributing if they know they're being well-represented and well-served. It's a mistake to see people respond to the stick by wanting to wield it themselves, and therefore imagine they can no longer respond to the carrot.

I'm certainly in favour of re-examining the way we consider debt. I've seen a suggestion out there to change it from compound interest to linear interest, which is interesting. The ancient jews I believe had a tradition whereby every seven years, all personal debts were cancelled. It seems clear that debt is a weapon of financial power and it is used like that. I'm not sure I'd be in favour of erasing the facility of personal debt entirely - people will still want to borrow and lend in their circles, but yeah, banks, mortgage lenders, all these things clearly can just largely vanish overnight and we'd be far better off. Interestingly, I've heaard debt talked about in terms of personal freedom - that the freedom to go into debt to buy your own house is an expression of personal freedom. Funny, because it's signing yourself up for economic chains.

Money is fungible, you can't "get rid of consumer credit" without getting rid of all personal credit.

Insurance and maintenance are a function of miles driven. If the car is used more often, those costs increase. You don't have the basics of this topic.

People complain about consumer credit and then they complain that rich people have access to loans. I don’t think people actually know how any of this stuff works.

It’s much better actually to do all your day to day finances through credit cards in reality. Much more secure and you get money back for purchases. That’s if you use it correctly.