Democratic capitalism (capitalism + democracy) alongside a strong and efficient social welfare system is what I personally adhere to.
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Fully automated luxury gay space communism, with a healthy dose of anarchism.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
Representative democracy with all corporations above a certain size or value to be worker-owned and run.
I’d hope that size is like 10 max.
Something like that.
The exact number is negotiable, but my thinking is based in sympathy for obsessive artisans who want to maintain control over their work, but can’t do it all themselves, or subcontract it all. If John Metalworker hires 3 assistants to help him make chainmail, because chainmail is his passion, and then his 3 assistants vote for the firm to swap production to the more-profitable chain-fence industry, that’s a bit of a shit situation. If the terms are clear from the outset, small firms should be allowed to maintain different methods of control than worker-ran co-ops.
Then i think we’re largely in agreement. People should always be free to form small groups to follow their passion.
Though there is another concern. Co-ops that get larger than (guessing here) around 100 or so employees will start to act in the selfish greedy ways of current corporations. Even an employee owned co-op will eventually try to do everything in their power to make a buck. They’re directly incentivized to do so.
So aside from the outright regulation from the social democracy, I’ve been toying with the idea of a requirement for a publicly appointed employee(s) that have power over major decisions. They’d probably need to be appointed via sortion, recallable by the public, and their wages independent of wellbeing of the co-op.
Another concern is the prioritization of common goods, and the actual mechanisms for welfare and social safeguards. Some number of co-ops would need to exist as contractors of the state, providing critical needs paid for by the state.
Oh, I imagine there would need to be quite a few regulations and regulatory bodies to oversee such matters. Even if they were operating with the best of intentions, which are often in short supply, the behavior of entities with narrow goals must be regulated to ensure harmony with the broader goals of the population (like “Living in a society where the rivers don’t catch on fire if you drop a match in them”).
Power corrupts, and all that jazz - for workers as much as bureaucrats and private parties. Only by ensuring that there are numerous power bases with the ability to effectively restrain one-another, and relatively free entry/advancement in each, can a free equilibrium be maintained in a society.
Of course, we have quite a few regulations and regulatory bodies nowadays, so the only real question is in the details of it, rather than the general concept. The concept is obviously workable.
Only by ensuring that there are numerous power bases with the ability to effectively restrain one-another, and relatively free entry/advancement in each, can a free equilibrium be maintained in a society.
Agreed. Any system is going to require a strong system of checks and balances. That’s one of the few good ideas the founding fathers had. They gloriously fucked up the implementation obviously. But the core concept is critical.
Of course, we have quite a few regulations and regulatory bodies nowadays, so the only real question is in the details of it, rather than the general concept. The concept is obviously workable.
For now we do.
For now we do.
More generally, I meant simply that government regulation is proven as a workable solution, conceptually, to restrain third-parties. The only remaining questions are tied up in ‘how to regulate the details’ and ‘how to maintain the regulatory body’, both of which we are currently experiencing… deep imperfections in the current implementation.
Agreed. Any system is going to require a strong system of checks and balances. That’s one of the few good ideas the founding fathers had. They gloriously fucked up the implementation obviously. But the core concept is critical.
Any system with checks and balances will fail when they are ignored. The current US situation is the continuation of at least a century of not holding the people who have tried to overthrow the governement accountable.
That’s where they fucked up the implementation. It’s being ignored because 1 party controls all 3 branches of the federal government.
They implemented a voting system that naturally devolves into a two parry system. Checks and balances don’t work when you are the one checking yourself.
Sounds pretty communist ngl
Yeah, and communism is scary, we don’t like things that are scary.
Anarcho-syndicalist commune. Take it in turns to act as sort-of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority, in the case of a major foreign policy decision.
How do you ensure people give up their turn?
How do you handle the complexity of providing for millions?
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Library economy with council democracy
Classless society, working off of IOUs. Focused on renewable energy and welfare of other humans.
The other commenter is correct, I think you’d prefer a gift economy
working off of IOUs.
That’s all that cash is. Currency is just a very elaborate system of IOUs.
I’m down with democratic capitalism as long as there are strong regulations and socialized services like medicine, fire, police, utilities, and roads. Does that make me a democratic socialist?
Speaking as a US citizen, I would like to move closer to the corporatist (not corporatocratic) models of countries like Sweden, Norway, and Germany. Capitalism and the economic strength that investment can bring tempered by strong unions at the national level to ensure that workers get good working and living conditions, with the government serving as a meeting grounds to hash out details. From my understanding Swedish law even mandates that worker unions have a place in government.
To me it seems ideal because it’s feasible. Corporations are already entrenched in the US government, the only missing pieces are unions large enough to be involved at the same level. I think we were on track to have that 50-60 years ago when unions like the UMWA represented over 400,000 workers by themselves, but unions have slowly been eroded over the decades. I think it would be easier to rebuild American unions and demand that corporations be kept in check than it would be to overhaul the current economic/political system into something entirely new.
We are already overhauling our system into something new. It’s called fascism, and its coming fast.
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Is called socialism
Social democracy. There’s a difference.
There’s no such a thing as democratic socialism. A socialist state will always require totalitarianism. My country was “socialist” from 1947 to 1989, aka a dictatorship. All actual socialist states have been and are dictatorships, for a reason. The only good “socialist” states such as the Nordic countries are not even socialist, they’re capitalist with strong socialist (welfare) policies.
The problem is that people spend far too long arguing what a system should be called, rather than actually arguing about the merits of the system itself.
Your comment is very accurate
I hope that some people have only confused socialism with social democracy, and not actually hold such views
Unfortunately there are a lot of socialism / communism “supporters” on this platform. They genuinely hold such views. It’s funny cause 99% of them have never lived in / have any direct connections with any former or current socialist state. Quality of life since 1989 has increased exponentially in Romania thanks to capitalism and democracy. Socialism is incompatible with democracy and freedom. That’s a fact proven over and over again throughout history.
socialism
noun
so·cial·ism ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm
1 : any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Doesn’t sound like your definition at all. What have they been smoking over at Merriam-Webster…
Socialism is incompatible with democracy and freedom. That’s a fact proven over and over again throughout history.
Soviet systems are incompatible with democracy and freedom. “Socialism” is an extremely broad term.
Some sort of libertarian socialism, basically. Markets with co-ops and a strong welfare system provided principally by highly democratic local governments.
Anything else than whatever the fuck saudi is doing.
Republic or constitutional monarchy? Literally anything else is better at this point.
I think Eleanor Shellstrop captured it best:
Yeah, in America everyone DOES whatever they want, society DID break down, it’s terrible, and it’s great! You only look out for number one, scream at whoever disagrees with you, there are no bees because they all died, and if you need surgery you just beg for money on the Internet! It’s the perfect system!"
Star Trek economy.
An idealized form of capitalism where there is no wealth inequality, no exploitation of labor, and everyone’s basic needs are provided for.
I live alone in the woods.
What about your singing animal friends, and your singing LSD lab?
Okay, I’ll have some animal friends. But I’ll use safe, natural shrooms instead of LSD
I’m opposed to ALL hierarchal power structures. If someone is given authority and power over others, regardless of the method of acquiring that power, the system is evil. That includes political power structures, but also economic and social ones. That includes capitalism, liberal democracies, state communism, fascism, etc, etc. They’re all fucking bad.
The democratic confederalist system in place in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria seems pretty nice, but it’s under VERY heavy attack right now and I don’t know how long it’ll be allowed to remain before Turkey and the new Syrian government (with US support) crushes it.
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How do you equitably manage and distribute the cost of critical systems like water sanitation for hundreds of millions of people without a hierarchy?
You create a culture where people feel ownership over their own communities and services. This isn’t something given to you by a government or business. It’s something you run and maintain in conjunction with the rest of your community for your own benefit. And you keep the focus locally while building a system that can interact on a larger scale. So I and my community have ownership and responsibility over our water system and it can integrate with the water system owned and maintained by the next community over.
Culture isn’t static. It drifts over time and newer generations of people will cease to value what their parents did. Any system maintained by culture will die rather quickly.
History shows quite the opposite. Systems maintained by culture are the ones that last. Systems maintained by force are the ones that breed opposition.
Culture itself is a system maintained by force, in its particular case it’s social force, peer pressure, pressure from family, etc.
It breeds opposition within itself, which is why it constantly changes.
And I think you’re wrong in that cultural longer. A good example of this is the values of the boomers. They valued the nuclear family, working hard to get promoted, the police, the american dream, etc. It’s now the complete opposite, the nuclear family is regarded as a joke, people loathe the idea of staying at a job longer than a few years let alone the decades the boomers would do. The police are hated, and the american dream is dead.
I don’t think folks are loathe to the idea their just aren’t jobs that allow for that anymore and if they did they don’t provide an equitable enough deal to make it desireable. If folks got promoted by working hard then folks would value it now but it does not happen. All that wraps into the american dream. Honestly I don’t think the police were valued over firemen or emts.
If folks got promoted by working hard then folks would value it now but it does not happen
Hence why they loathe it.
Also the local community can dump their waste in the river because it benefits their local community and they don’t care about the people downriver!
The system still needs a structure for interacting with other communities beyond the local one.
If someone is given authority and power over others, regardless of the method of acquiring that power, the system is evil.
What do you propose for the case of someone stronger than me stealing my food?
Are you two the only people in the village?
I know communities are out of fashion, but they used to settle all these matters. No need for cops or prisons.
So you are calling for might makes right. I had hoped you had a better idea than that.
Might? Where did I say that? That’s about the opposite of the point I was trying to get across.
Then how do you propose the village deal with the situation? You proposed that the solution to someone stronger than me be to get done more guys. And then what?
You might consider using extra words, if you want me to understand your argument.
To get done more guys? Am I having a stroke?
I never said you should go get the community to bash his brains in, that’s all in your mind. When you were younger, if your brother steals from you, you’d turn to your parents, and they’d assess the situation. Now apply that to a community, like a small village or a city block.
