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Please stop snarking on the internet, or if you do, be more obvious with it. Its hard to get social cues in person and even harder to get them over a computer screen.
No, but I believe it is the system which most efficiently utilizes it.
To the rest of your quotes, the problem with the Soviet economic system is that they relied to heavily on central planning. These government 'companies' should be run based on the worker's and the particular outlet's needs, not on the opinions of the ruling class.
Well that would be even better, then labor could be allotted elsewhere. Even still, there would be people who would need to produce, monitor, and repair these robots, and though they would be less in number, it would still generate jobs.
In areas where luxuries are being sold, yes there would be some competition. As I said, so long as everyone is being paid above the cost of living, there is no reason not to give extra money to those who produce more, which could in turn be spent on luxuries. People can get money however they want to, it would just be the government's job to collect taxes and make sure they get put back into worker's pockets. Not all luxuries could just be freely produce, yes, but we do have the ability to house just about every homeless person and produce food for everyone if we wanted. Aeroponics could be done in any climate controlled environment, and through use of robotics and a large workforce, enough could be produced to feed just about everyone in the world, especially if it were coupled with the already existing farms. Technology which could improve resource production would be prioritized.
Simply because it is also the Capitalist method of using skilled people to do jobs doesn't mean the Socialist system can't take advantage of it too. As I said above, there would be some disparity of wealth, just so long as people made enough to get by, and it's probably safe to assume most people want to do more than that. And unlike the Capitalist system where there is more incentive to cut off books which would likely not sell, they would already be getting funding from the mass government pool, so publishers would be naturally inclined to publish a book presented to them than turn it away.
As I said (though admittedly afterwards) is that yes you would make slightly more money as a higher-up than as a simple plumber, and doctors wouldn't lose their ability to make decisions or be subjected to any sort of lower rank. The only difference is that people under their authority would be being paid higher wages, they would pay higher taxes but in exchange receive more equipment and workers, and that if it was felt they were abusing their power, they could be removed through worker's consensus and be forced to either be a doctor somewhere else or get another job.
I'm glad to hear you aren't one of those 'Gilded Ages were perfect' and 'if you die on the job it's your fault' types. I've once argued a Libertarian into him admitting he didn't believe in the Bill of Rights, only to be set upon by his peers. Anyway, I'm not saying life under Capitalism is some sort of living hell, because it isn't absolute Capitalism. I only think that if there is an opportunity to improve the standard of the average person's living, it should be done. I have a similar point of view for Socialism, in fact, I once wrote a paper on why even though I was a Socialist, that Liberals, Conservatives, and even Nationalists play an important role in government. Should I ever find it, I'll send it your way.
It is nice for once to not be barraged with personal attacks and instead have a real debate.
Proud to have been rated -55 Dawkins in the recent consensus, would not want to be associated with that cult of personality. You just wait, this is only the start of the pro-sodomite agenda. Next thing you know fathers will be marrying their daughters and churches will be fined for "discriminating" them if they reject to conduct the "marriage" ceremony.
To Sscenopal's quote:
Yes, the doctor may have more money --but after the taxation needed to keep your socialist idealistic state alive, the doctor would have around 1% more than the plumber-if that. Alongside the fact the doctor doesn't get paid much more anyway, and the poorer people in the nation, whilst it would be possible to keep them on a living wage, will be poor, even including the massive government handouts you'd rely on. So the only incentive for doctors in this socialist state is that they get more equipment, and that they are the boss of people who will oust him/her as soon as he/she stops handing out pay rises -which will come from the taxes he/she pays. That certainly wouldn't incentivise me through a decade of training while my friend who hasn't bothered in school goes out and starts getting paid, alongside the fact once I'm finished this friend gets to go home four hours earlier than me everyday while I only get £1,000 more than him every year. This also comes with the knowledge that whilst his job is secure, I will get fired around seven times and have to move to another side of the country every time, and after that I'll be unemployed.
And with that, Animi is gone.
So, is it over? Can I return to the board?
Aexalla, Kubrath, and Greenlandic Arctic
Hang on, baby, we're almost there!
Can't help but imagine the following situation:
Priest: ...and with that, I pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss the bride.
Bride: Ewww, gross!
Groom: Honey, you're grounded.
Sooner or later robots will replace most of manual labour, including repair and maintenance of those very robots (see self-repairing materials). What then? Do we keep restructuring manual labour while "upper level jobs" continue to be left only to those who are passionate about them?
So, if I understand you correctly, what you want isn't really socialism, it's just a very large welfare program. Also, feeding the world with aeroponics will cost more than just modernizing farms to work more efficiently (which includes modernizing crops). Aeroponics might be better for environments where nutrient-rich soil is not available or is insufficient.
I didn't imply competition was limited to capitalism, but socialism indeed stifles it to the point where it is insignificant. Again, what I'm hearing here is less socialism and more welfareism.
As for publishers, you'd be surprised to find that they fund books that aren't very commercially viable. These include obscure autobiographies, historical research and other non-fiction. This is because publishers also vie for prestige. Coca Cola for example doesn't really need all those adverts, because they're a household name. Or are they? Brand image must be enforced, not only to seek more penetration, but mostly to maintain recognition and the strength of the brand. Loyalty is built on more than commercial success, particularly so for customers. For example, as a consumer I'd much rather go to a great brand like Barnes & Noble, rather than some local brand, because not only is the quality of writing more assured in my mind, but the selection of works available is certain to be much bigger. Barnes & Noble much like Coca Cola produces works to strengthen the brand in the eyes of the customer. This, of course, is just one of many plausible scenarios under current Western economic models, which involve producing commercial failures. As I said before, power, status and money go hand in hand.
That seems to provide even less incentive for doctors to put themselves through the excruciating training that is necessary for a proper license. Marginally more professional leeway, with an asterisk, is not even close to the compensation you get when under the capitalist system, which also allows you to govern your own team, and get as much equipment as you need, while also having to keep to a respectable standard. I'm talking about private hospitals, however.
I think 
Greenlandic Arctic answered that quite well.
Do send it if you find it.
This is true, but I wouldn't exactly consider this to be a bad thing. We may eventually reach a point where robotics can perform all labor-tasks, for humans to reap the benefits. In this case, then work would not be necessary for the most part, and so long as resources continued to flow in, perhaps through such sciences as alchemy, no one would have to perform manual labor and everyone could either not work or only do work requiring creativity.
I suppose you could call it that, except that I do feel that for the system to work, as many people need to actually be working. You may have heard of a company called 'Labor Ready', it's basically the place where everyone goes if they absolutely need work. How it works is that a company/person calls them and requests a job, and when workers come in for the day, they are sent off to do that job and are paid by the day. I think if such a system were utilized by the government, it would greatly lower unemployment and if there were no 'regular' welfare programs for the unemployed, barring the young, old, and disabled, it would be a greater incentive for people to work to choose their jobs so as not to have to use this system, as the jobs given are often very difficult and laborious. As for aeroponics, I do agree that we should work with what we know before we move on to hypothetical production methods. Aeroponics is just a favorite of mine because I feel it has the strongest potential future, especially regarding space colonization.
As I said, my views on Socialism are more moderate. To me, if you remove the worker's struggle by enabling them to be paid wages above the living level and you allowed them to be able to climb leadership ladders by allowing them open access to education, then it is of little concern how much one makes, so long as it is appropriately taxed. Through government ownership of companies, some may grow to be more preferred than others. In this, they will make more sales, and their branch will get more money, so there is some level of competition.
To both Kubrath and Greenlandic Arctic, There would be more difference than just 1%, as I said, the highest paid person may may about five times more than the poorest. This may not seem like too much, but since the majority of people are going to be paid the lowest amount, since the majority of jobs would be labor related, higher luxuries, like cruises, jewelry, and other such things would go down in price but not so low that just an average person could get them. A doctor may be able to have all the luxuries that they had when they were making five hundred times the average person, and at the same time, if an average person wanted access to such luxuries, they could just go to school and be a good doctor, and this would open up these opportunities for them. I'd say that would be enough to get most people to at least try for a job requiring skills but paying even slightly higher.
People currently live off labour income, so until that changes, robotics will be bad for people's livelihoods, at least where manual labour is concerned. This problem will be solved though, sooner or later.
Also, alchemy?
That sounds like a great supplement to unemployment benefits, but let's not forget that beggars can't be choosers. There is only so much work available, and since you're basically saying that you're out of options by going to that company, choice is already out the window.
It would be perfect for space, but down here we have much better alternatives.
This again sounds like a welfare state with a bigger public sector. I think the government as the middleman is completely unnecessary, as I don't see how they can possibly contribute to a business or establishment aside from lowering fees. This is why I much prefer government involvement in things like healthcare so that more people can afford it, but not businesses like publishing, since the trade off for propaganda is not worth it.
So basically the Scandinavian model? This sounds very close to what my NS country is like, right down to the "only 5 times more" threshold. This doesn't need socialism, though, this just needs social programs and good regulation of those aspects of the market that need it.
Stopped reading.
/thread end
On alchemy, I'm not talking about some sort of magical solution to resources. Alchemy is the science of breaking matter down and rearranging it for whatever you need, similar to 3D printing. We have the technology to do that now, but it's very expensive and time consuming. Hopefully though, we'll be able to overcome these difficulties so as to produce rare resources with little effort.
There is a lot of work to be done worldwide, which is one of the reasons I support global governance over the single-country modal. Think how many workers it would take to rebuild Nepal, or Iraq, or any other country which has sustained significant damage by natural or unnatural means. Also, infrastructure needs to be improved in isolated areas, like the Sahara Desert. The best way I think this could be accomplished is instead of moving workers to far-flung areas to do jobs like these, we focus on providing faster, cleaner transport, so that a worker can go to one of these places, worker a few hours, and then be back home by nightfall. This way, we could get workers wherever they are needed and get work done faster, and this enables us to actually be able to take on more work without worrying that there will be no one to do it. If a person though does not want to be a part of this system, they could just get a good education and get a job requiring skill, like being a doctor.
Since we've fairly well concluded on aeroponics, on your next point, I generally see corporations as middle-men in the same light as you do government. To me, I feel that a corporate head is really wholly unnecessary, and takes a lot of money which could be put to public projects or higher wages. Imagine if you took all of those 'too big to fail' bank leaders out of the equation, and recirculated their money back into the system. This would have great effects on any economy, and a government supervisor doesn't need to be paid as much as these people take in. The idea of governments using sectors like publishing to produce propaganda doesn't concern me too much, especially if their process of acceptance or denial were transparent to the public. Besides, a capitalistic government can use other means, like bribery or censorship laws, to do just what you described.
You could, but I prefer the security of the Socialist modal. In order to ensure workers are being properly paid, you'd need inspectors for every company, and eventually corporations would find loopholes to take more money out of workers. Government ownership ensures that everyone is following the same rules, and I find it less likely that a government company would go back on its own rules.
Alchemy is not a science in modern language. You might be thinking of nuclear chemistry or nuclear physics. Also, 3D printing stacks successive layers of a material to form a desired shape–it is not “breaking down matter.” I'm a scientist and I'm simply trying to stop the spread of pseudoscience.
Alchemy is something different, but again someone else can explain this better than me.
There's a reason settlements are so successful. Constantly moving people around is time-consuming, resource-consuming and highly stressful on the personnel. It's very difficult to coordinate masses of people, and doubly hard to coordinate masses of people who can't get along with each other. I too would like to see one flag and one people some day, but this possibility is far away into the future. We have to think about the now, and right now we don't have the means to get to that end.
I don't like corporate fat cats, either. However, someone has to be in charge. Yeah, their wages are absurd, but who's going to expand the company if not for them? Wait, let me rephrase that: Who's going to effectively manage the company's capital in order to ensure the company's prospects? If all you're suggesting is to simply replace a CEO with an MP, then I don't see the point. Both get fat checks, but only one of them actually cares about the success of a company. Having to take care of a business that is at a loss will be a heavy burden on any government, and this will lead to horrible consequences if undertaken for every industry as socialism would have it. It's better to have the government focus on the well being of its constituency, while leaving the market to market folk.
As for transparency and government, since when was that actually a thing? The only protection you can have against censorship is a strong constitution and a justice system that can manage to enforce it. Publishers competing with each other have only marginal restrictions compared to a monolithic government that will absolutely silence dissent if allowed to. In regards to what I said earlier, this is probably the only absolute thing I believe in: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ain't nothing more corrupt than a big government, except maybe for a big company.
Unions are traditionally there to counteract exploitation and stand for better worker conditions. They're the antibodies for the infection of excessive free markets. As for governments they couldn't care less about their rules. What they collectively want is to ensure their own interests. To be honest, I don't know what's more rotten, big governments or big companies, though at least one of them is actually honest about their greed.
To Aexalla, yeah I know, though alchemy is what I've heard it generally be called. I can't for the life of me remember what its actually scientific name is, but put simply it is forcing two elements together to form a new material altogether. Cold fusion maybe? I don't know. I also said that that 3D printing was only similar. Through this process and mixed with 3D printing, you could theoretically create anything.
Settlements could work too. However, I feel people may be more inclined to work and generally have more moral if they could go home to wherever they wanted. If methods as mentioned above were put to use, resources would be of little concern, but before such things become available, settlements could be put to use for the willing. My idea of a unified Earth isn't necessarily of all people pledging allegiance to a single nation. I like to think of an ideal global hegemony as a 'United Nations with authority'. National governments could still be maintained, wars could still occur, and individual nations may keep different laws than others, but at the top of it all would be a democratically elected government who would be in charge of collecting taxes and distributing them accordingly where they are needed, and making sure certain international laws were being followed and maintaining some form of a standing army to enforce their laws.
Company leadership would be elected by the people working there whose job would be to oversee work being done, and economic expansions of the company would be overseen by professionals who would see if such expansion was necessary and if so, use the taxes that business has paid to be put into said expansion. I feel that as long as the position is split between the two, and they are both on the same government payroll, they should be able to effectively control the company without unnecessary payments to people whose job is to simply be the 'head' of a company. Onto transparency, I feel it would be more beneficial because if the government were censoring something, it would be very obvious and if the people didn't want it, they could put a stop to it. If people saw a book was rejected, they could contact the author and ask why that was. If they don't agree with the publisher's decision, they could hold a referendum to change their decision. If they refuse, they could take it up with higher authorities in the government. And if they refuse, then so long as the movement was popular, they could have them ousted from power and replaced with someone new.
While governments would own all industries, it would ultimately be up to the people to set the rules. In a way, it would be like unions running the country, with the government only there to ensure the system ran smoothly.
By "settlements" I meant everything from a village to a metropolis. What you're suggesting will require to fundamentally restructure the current settlements that we have in order to adapt to fluid labour forces.
I don't think a One World Order would work unless all people fall within one border. The UN has no effective authority, because nations can't get along with each other, and I don't think this will change until nationalism is dead.
CEOs aren't mere figureheads that got there by chance, they have earned their way into a company and they have a lot of responsibilities. If they cannot manage it effectively, they're given the boot by the other shareholders. What your professional overseers would do is exactly what the job description of a CEO is at the moment. I see no reason for this sequestration of executive jobs when nothing fundamental will be changed about them. You won't be decreasing anyone's payroll like this, because you'll essentially be paying two people for the same job.
People are ignorant, and they are also busy. These two factors make people unreliable. To put this in another way, people have neither the time nor the information to be efficient in the endless array of referendums that will be held every time something questionable is produced by the government. That's why we have institutions in place (parliament, justice system, presidency, etc) to do that for us, because we cannot run a country by ourselves. These institutions do not necessitate socialism to run effectively for the wider populace. Also, people can protest any part of their government if they wanted to but, for the very same reasons I pointed out above, they don't. As far as our history has shown us, it usually takes great effort to get anywhere as a society.
The way I see it, you're suggesting a dictatorship of the proletariat, but you don't really offer any change to the current system - you merely replace it. Unions do work, people can influence politics and businesses, there is freedom of speech, etc in developed capitalist democracies. The only exception is who owns what, and frankly I trust the masses less than I trust governments and companies.
Sorry for late response, I've got tornado damage on my house from last night. I'll give a proper response as soon as I finish up here.
My God, are you OK???
What the???? Tornados? That's weird? Was it on the news?????? Is everyone in your village/town/city alright?
That's what I've been doing.
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