"We've literally had over a hundred years of political experiments with socialism." again, you're cherry picking failure to fit your bias and you are also ignoring history (aka, in your own words, you have a weak argument). we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway. i already know that you're gonna argue that BuT nOrWaY iS cAPiTaLIsM!!, but that's not true. go look at norway's nearly 80% of wealth that is held in public ownership when you don't count housing...that is a very clear success in history. so, you're right, "What we’ve seen in the 20th century is socialism in reality." we've seen it work in reality and we've seen it fail in reality. in the same way that we've seen capitalism work in reality, and we've seen it fail in reality.
and again, cherry picking with the "i believe it barely worked with a packaging company" ignores the many, many countless examples where that organization model has worked and has proven to be more resilient than a capitalist enterprise. very weak argument, especially because you say "i believe" but you aren't sure because that it is a fact, you just offhandedly heard that or something? i would share more examples with you but you clearly have no desire to learn and just want to win an argument.
"Corruption doesn't disappear when you switch to socialism." you're right, but you're ignoring the fact that socialism, in it's right form, is a democratic system. maybe i'm too optimistic, but that knowledge is a lousy reason to not setup a system of democratic to safeguard against this truth. the ability to hack democracy is one of those questions that keep me up at night, and i see it as a challenge and problem to solve rather than something to cede to (which should get the HN crowd excited). clearly this truth of corruption is abused in capitalism and it's exacerbated since we don't have the safeguard of a democratic process to prevent these abuses. at least with socialism, there's democracy.
EDIT: also, based on your argument style, i think that you might say, "but you said that socialism is a cooperative model and not norway. GOTCHA!" if that's the case, LOL, then you're missing the point and proving my point that you're only trying to win an argument.
No, you didn’t say that, but you keep using similar logic to ignore all of the socialist messes in the 20th century ie “No, that’s not socialism. That’s a dictatorship.” I’m just showing you how ridiculous that argument is.
> “again, you're cherry picking failure to fit your bias and you are also ignoring history (aka, in your own words, you have a weak argument). we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway. i already know that you're gonna argue that BuT nOrWaY iS cAPiTaLIsM!!, but that's not true.”
I love how you keep accusing me of “cherry picking”, when you’re the one primarily doing it. For the record, there are only three Scandinavian countries (or four if you count Finland) while there are over 40 countries that were or are still socialist.
> “ we've had almost a hundred years of success of socialism in finnish countries, particularly norway.”
Now you’re cherry picking one out of three countries, with a ridiculous point that is completely untrue.
Norway might have a well funded socialist program, but that’s different from having a socialist economic system.
“According to a 2018-report from Statistics Norway, ten per cent of the population in the country owned 60 per cent of the wealth. The one per cent richest in the country owned nearly 21 per cent of all the wealth.”
https://sciencenorway.no/economics-equality-finans/is-econom...
Countries with socialist economic systems also don’t have stock markets.
> ”go look at norway's nearly 80% of wealth that is held in public ownership when you don't count housing...that is a very clear success in history. so, you're right”
You’re proving my point for me that it’s ridiculous to call Norway socialist, and you’re being hypocritical for cherry picking.
Yes, it's totally reasonable to overlook an important fact to make your argument work /s
Real estate is a huge asset, and has been considered wealth for thousands of years.
> ”EDIT: also, based on your argument style, i think that you might say, "but you said that socialism is a cooperative model and not norway. GOTCHA!" if that's the case, then LOL because you're missing the point and proving that you're only trying to win an argument.”
I’m not missing any point. You're just ignoring facts. I also find it funny that you’re self aware of just how flawed your argument is. Yet you still can’t admit to being wrong. Co-operatives barely work in a single location, let alone scale up nationally. Also it’s really ironic how you can comfortably loosen your definition of socialism to cherry pick.
> ”we’ve seen it work in reality and we've seen it fail in reality.”
No, we haven’t. The Scandinavian countries are all capitalist systems.
> ”ignores the many, many countless examples where that organization model has worked and has proven to be more resilient than a capitalist enterprise.”
There are so few of them across several continents. Moreover, most if not all of them are tiny.
> ”I would share more examples with you but you clearly have no desire to learn and just want to win an argument.”
You mean that you’re going to cherry pick yet again, while continually accusing me of the same thing? There’s barely a thousand of them compared to millions of private businesses.
> “you’re right, but you're ignoring the fact that socialism, in it's right form, is a democratic system.”
That may be its “right” form in your mind, but that’s not how it evolves in reality due to the extreme centralization of power. Virtually all of them didn’t even incorporate voting for the masses into their governments.
> ”maybe i'm too optimistic, but that knowledge is a lousy reason to not setup a system of democratic to safeguard against this truth”
That knowledge is called studying history to avoid repeating the dozens of failures in the 20th century. Like I said, socialism is no longer a new experiment. We know what late stage socialism looks like, and how fast it takes to get there. For many countries, these systems couldn’t even last a 100 years.
> “the ability to hack democracy is one of those questions that keep me up at night, and i see it as a challenge and problem to solve rather than something to cede to (which should get the HN crowd excited).”
I am not ceding anything. You’re just ignoring a fundamental truth. Capitalism is flawed, but it’s still better than socialism because it handles corruption better due to its focus on decentralization by design.
> ”clearly this truth of corruption is abused in capitalism and it's exacerbated since we don't have the safeguard of a democratic process to prevent these abuses.”
You still haven’t countered my argument as to why corruption spreads much faster and is more pervasive in a socialist system as opposed to a capitalist one. If you need reminding why, it’s because socialist systems centralize power much more than capitalist systems. Essentially saying that it will just magically work is not a good argument.
> ”at least with socialism, there's democracy.”
Out of close to 50 socialist systems in the 20th century, only one of them was a democracy, and I don’t even think it lasted a year. What you wrote is baseless and untrue.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/034/711/Scree...
If you can’t properly explain your position within HN comments, it means that you don’t really understand what you believe in or that it’s really flawed. No, I’m not emailing you. If there’s anyone who’s ignorant of anything in this discussion, it’s you. You have no knowledge of the history of socialism despite your claims. I’m confident that you don’t even fully understand what socialism is based on your comments.
You should probably re-read Animal Farm which is notable work from a notable socialist
it's clear that you're the one who doesn't know what socialism is. this is a pointless discussion and you have no idea what you're talking about and didn't really respond to any of my arguments in good faith. i'll say it again because it went over your head in my very first comment: state dictatorships with nationalized industries are not socialism.
i've been properly explaining my beliefs but you've just been misinterpreting my claims and ignoring what i say because you're bad at debating. it's impossible to argue with somebody who says that everything you say is wrong (despite the claims being true). it's beating somebody at an argument through gaslighting.
this is a waste of my time. i'm not putting in the effort to write my arguments better because this is like arguing with a racist why the confederate flag is a hateful symbol.
...about how Leninism and related systems, despite superficial rhetoric borrowed from socialism, were not socialism, and looped back around to be equivalent to the capitalism that socialists oppose. (And, more broadly, about how people in practice could continue to maintain faith in those and other systems in which thr nominal ideals of a revolution were utterly betrayed by revolutionary leadership.)
It’s a flawed argument that you guys keep parroting. Leninism is another word for late stage socialism.
Your comment also shows that you failed to read my previous comments. Why bother replying if you’re just going to ignore what I wrote?
because we need to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about
You already lost the argument multiple times already since you’ve relied on personal attacks as opposed to attacking terrible arguments like yours
Your accusation is really comical since your arguments are way more cherry picked than mine. I at least acknowledge that what we have right now is indeed capitalism despite the lack of ideological purity.
> you missed a big point that there are tons of variations of how socialism can work.
We've literally had over a hundred years of political experiments with socialism. I've gone over all the variations that have existed in real life, with the longest running experiments being North Korea and Cuba.
> i define socialism as a way to organize a business where the workers control the business
The reason why this doesn't work is logistics. It's already incredibly hard just to get that co-op concept working in small company. (I believe it barely worked with a packaging company.) It's near impossible to even get that working for a co-op with locations nationwide. Our so-called national co-ops run more as a public benefit corporations than your strict view of a co-op.
> i define capitalism where an owner (or owners) control the business and they employee workers who have little or no control over the business.
In a system where even workers can own pieces of a corporation, that black and white view doesn't survive; especially when workers can strike, just leave for another company, or better yet start their own business. It is much harder for proletariats to influence the socialist state, than it is for employees to influence their bosses because capitalist systems have competing powers
> if we can't agree on those definitions then there's really no point in nitpicking each other's arguments.
When your entire argument falls apart from “nitpicking”, it means that it’s weak. Your argument is weak because it completely ignores history. We've done the socialism experiment for over a 100 years now. Ideas don’t live in an ivory vacuum. They need to survive reality. What we’ve seen in the 20th century is socialism in reality. If you ever get a chance to read the founding declarations of communist states, they are very similar to your co-op idealism.
What Confucius, Marx, Paine, Plato, and even Smith all failed to realize is that humans will always find a way to cheat the system and subvert it for their own gain. In HN speak, "individual nodes will always seek to optimize their own efficiency, at the cost of the system as a whole". Corruption doesn't disappear when you switch to socialism. Every known system regardless of whether it's capitalism or socialism will always eventually fail ie hit late stage, unless you can completely neutralize the human propensity to hack everything. Capitalism and socialism are both poor, temporary bandaids. Capitalism is only slightly better because it offers more flexibility.
All you have to read is Animal Farm