I asked someone who wants a communist society about how the planners would distribute goods and she responded "surveys". Would it work in practice?
Schools are labour camps.
So he advocates no privacy? What if you want to buy something a little well embarrasing? Would you openly say in a public survey you want that? How long would it take to get your good and what if you change your mind? In a market economy I can go buy Doritos cooler ranch, and then go back and decide to buy nacho cheese flavor if I wish to get it. What is the limit too? Can i get a certain amount of somethin per month? Without prices how does one determine what one person can get? Who makes the products and where does innovation come from?
would you like a vehicle?
*ferrari please
would you like a house?
*3 please, whitehouse quality, buckingham palace quality, and neverlandstyleeee
would you like nice clothes?
*etc etc. etc.
of course, *demanding* things (without money) is easy. allocating resources for production, and doing the delivery is teh hard partz/
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
sentiments such as this come up all the time and you know what? there are so many valid refutations of communism that just completely destroy it. that doesn't matter to progressives though. when has truth ever mattered?
I've seen 12 year olds with no prior knowledge refute the labor theory of value. it's the biggest joke in the history of the world. it would be funny if it hadn't already killed 100 million people.
Dear State:
Here is my list of things I want for Christmas from the collective warehouse this month...
some ponies (must be cute and also fast), cherry licorice, a bomb-proof SUV that's been "pimped", pay-per-view but not so much with the paying part, subscription to Thai Ladyboys Monthly, a jacuzzi with jets, one of those beds that will move my back up and down when I watch my shows, an IV in my arm one of those space food sets, and some adult diapers so I can give "according to my ability." I want a bowling alley in my house!
Thanks ahead of time.
Your Comrade, John Ess
No one has time to meaningfully vote on the allocation of the billions of products in the market.
"He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper." Edmund Burke
Imaginary Socialist Survey: Rate on a scale of '0' to '10' how much stuff you need the state to give you, '0' being nothing, '10' being everything.
Rate on a scale of '0' to '10' how much stuff you need the state to give you, '0' being nothing, '10' being everything.
Yep, can't go wrong with this. Clearly she's thought this out in great detail. After all, scarcity is only an illusion invented by greedy capitalists who wish to oppress society with their competition, machinery, and high-quality goods.
I hereby retract everything I've ever said about central planners.
[/sarcasm]
Diminishing Marginal Utility - IT'S THE LAW!
haha I actually smirked when I read this. Maybe an explanation of the moral hazard should be enough.
Preference is only revealed in action.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
On second thoughts, I've got a better answer:
"What about the trees?"
All the knowledge of what everyone wants and how everything can be manufactured, obviously resides with in the sum of all human beings, right? So why not simply sit down together everyone and TALK IT ALL THROUGH?
I think that it's basically that alternative to individual liberty and trading (the price system) which collectivists vaguely hope for. It needs to be challenged. Phrasing it the right way, even people who don't care about philosophy or know anything about history or the monetary system, will quickly understand that non-capitalism is simply impossibly impractical. Mises "Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" is an icebreaker, one of the most important books in history. It needs to be popularized, shortened and simplified in language now 100 years later. Maybe a Study Guide for it (as already exists for Human Action) would be a very good idea? Salernos postscript to it is very welcome.
I'd very much like to see this particular point made by AE being developed. It definitely takes the debate between socialism and capitalism beyond "do you like it or not" to "it is impossible".
http://mises.org/econcalc.asp
It's not fascism when the government does it.
“We must spend now as an investment for the future.” - President Obama
I told her this refutation, that not everything can be provided, but then she responded, "This isn't true if people work hard together." WTF?
I guess I should give up trying to refute her, LOL.
Ask her what would motivate people to work hard when everything is given them by the state anyway, or conversely what would motivate them to work when they can't keep what they produce.
Of course, one can't realistically expect that to lead anywhere, seeing as socialists don't believe in human action.
That's the meeting I mentioned above! She doesn't mean "work" hard, but "meet" hard:
Talk it over everybody, do it now. Be friends and figure out how everything should be distributed and organized, everybody together, with no money or trading but only talk, talk and talk!
It's much more serious than a motivational problem. Even if everyone in the whole world was a committed communist, they couldn't figure out how to produce anything similiar to any industrial good invented during the last 100 years or so. Even 19th century agriculture would crumble severly under such a regime of non-choice and non-pricing, since crucial economic information would be non-created and absent from everyones decision process.
eliotn:I guess I should give up trying to refute her, LOL.
There is nothing to refute I would say.
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