Author	Message
davesearles	Posted: 26 Oct 2006 10:45 am    Post subject: A hybrid alternative? I had written about this before about a combined system of labor owning and operating the means of production through an industrial democracy, but also having space ooutside of the industral economy free lance artisians of all sorts, barbers, chiropractors, pie makers, small farmers, what have you in essentially a market environment. Should we start pitching a system such as this as a viable alternative, if not the viable alternative to present day society, or has my mind been taken over by the devil? Are there non-"Deleonist" groups already pushing this idea? dave
mikelepore	Posted: 27 Oct 2006 09:14 am    Post subject: Not push it, but allow for it. I think these rules are necessary: 1. the social store should only redeem credits earned by working in social industry. The social store should not accept private barter club tickets. Whatever else individuals choose to do is off the books. If some people want to swap pies for haircuts, or make up a mathematical fiction called money to assist their efforts, social industry can ignore it. 2. If someone behaves like a traditional capitalist and ignores public safety, they should be personally responsible for their actions. Did you add monosodium glutamate to your pies and distribute them, even after a study showed that this chemical causes cancer? If so, you face a charge of attempted murder. The hands-off policy must also mean a lack of enforcability. Capitalism requires constant enforcement. What's going to happen when the barber wants to sue the pie maker for refusal to deliver? Society shouldn't provide the court. Those who want to play the game couldn't have an enforcement agency. The absense of enforcability would prevent multi-step operations, involving several people in specialized roles. What if someone else bakes the pies and you yourself just deliver them? You may decide to pocket the entire revenue of the sale and not bring it back to bakery. Without society providing a cop and a judge and a jailer, whoever has the job of collecting the fee can keep the entire fee. If you drive the pie truck and you decide to quit, you can just keep the truck. This is what people like Libertarians fail to recognize -- for capitalism to exist it must be forced into existence at every moment by a coercive power.
davesearles	Posted: 27 Oct 2006 11:53 am    Post subject: Mike wrote: 1. the social store should only redeem credits earned by working in social industry. The social store should not accept private barter club tickets. Whatever else individuals choose to do is off the books. If some people want to swap pies for haircuts, or make up a mathematical fiction called money to assist their efforts, social industry can ignore it. dave writes: The industrial economy accepts only script that it has issued for labor performed. However some mechanism would have to be worked out for acquisitions of material for production for example. Maybe the indutrial economy figures out that it doesn't want to get into the production of eggs, that it has determined for some reason that the local artisian farmers do a better job or raising eggs and without the hassle of dealing with all of that chicken shit, etc. So at some point industry just might issue "labor vouchers without labor being performed within the industry, i.e. someone clocking in for eggs used in production of god only knows what. I guess they'll have to come to some rough labor equivilent per dozen eggs, or whatever in return for the eggs.
mikelepore	Posted: 28 Oct 2006 03:06 am    Post subject: Quote: Maybe the indutrial economy figures out that it doesn't want to get into the production of eggs That would surprise me. The larger the scale of industry, the greater the benefits of volume and mechanization. Maybe a huge robotic chicken-shit vacuum-cleaner system. I would be surprised if there's anything that mass production can't do most efficiently. However, in artistic productions we want originality and personality, so I can visualize the self-employed orchestra or movie director. There's some charm in handmade pottery, just knowing each one is unique, but eggs are identical and boring enough to hand over to a big automated factory.
davesearles	Posted: 28 Oct 2006 09:43 am    Post subject: We grew up too far removed from agriculture and the time you spent in Vermont you were in Burlington. indutrail production of everything is not necessary or is it even desirable. Since we will be free from want, the only factor should not be how can this product be made with the absolute minimum of short term labor. Where do you buy your eggs?
mikelepore	Posted: 28 Oct 2006 04:02 pm    Post subject: Quote: Since we will be free from want, the only factor should not be how can this product be made with the absolute minimum of short term labor. If you mean that there are people who enjoy producing eggs, yes - the method would not be determined only by rates of yield but also by preference and satisfaction. But the method is one thing, and having private resourcing versus social resourcing is another issue. Just because people enjoy a favorite method, how did you get from there to making it a privately funded project? Quote: Where do you buy your eggs? Contents mysteriously appear in my refrigerator, or else my wife must have put them there. I haven't seen the inside of a food store since about 1985.
davesearles	Posted: 28 Oct 2006 06:48 pm    Post subject: If you mean that there are people who enjoy producing eggs, yes - the method would not be determined only by rates of yield but also by preference and satisfaction. But the method is one thing, and having private resourcing versus social resourcing is another issue. Just because people enjoy a favorite method, how did you get from there to making it a privately funded project? I didn't know that I had. For some unknown reason a indutrial bakery wants eggs. No, they don't want those eggs that come out of those egg factories. For some reason the preferencde of this bakery is for eggs produced by small producers, Fresher eggs, better coordination with supply, it avoids monoculture, it has also been determined that this set up also has a side effect of ensuring a better tasting supply of chickens to eat. I don't see the divide as social/private but as indutrial/non-industrial. Got a probelm with that? I'll throw one of my farm fresh eggs at you?
mikelepore	Posted: 30 Oct 2006 03:58 am    Post subject: One phrase you adopted but not the other: Don't you see that "small producers" must mean "privately funded projects"? The egg producer must have incubators, and parts to repair incubators, and feed, and a source of chickens. That means they must buy resources, getting the funds for that from the proceeds of sales. However, socialist industry would never have to buy any resources because they would be allocated by interdepartment transfer (according to the definition of socialism that I insist on.) This is what I consider the source of socialism's advantages: that industries would not be separate financial entities that have to buy their tools or materials by spending their sales revenue. I'm leaning toward saying that this distinction is the source of ALL of the advantages of having socialism.
mikelepore	Posted: 30 Oct 2006 04:08 am    Post subject: When you say "fresh" eggs, you seem to imply that the centralized planning of socialism can't have facilities that are local and small, but I believe that it can. Even if this one little chicken coop is collectively owned by the whole world, even if a little popcorn stand or lemonade stand is collectively owned by the whole world, it can still simulate the same kind of local service that any little mom'n'pop operation has done. I'm saying "central planning" to mean that society as a whole has funded the construction and continuous resourcing of it, and the people who operate it get the same kind of labor compensating income that others do. Still, there is nothing in that to prevent it from being "local" in every other sense of the word - it's unique flavor and decor and customs and methods. So I'm not ready to concede your premise that the operation that lies outside of socialism has different kinds of eggs.
davesearles	Posted: 30 Oct 2006 11:41 am    Post subject: Sure it could, but why? Capitalism has gone pretty fasr enough in establishing monoculture through many industries in much of the world. As long as we get rid of wage slavery, as far as I am concerned small independent producers and suppliers and servicers can co-exist with the industrial economy. And it will be better because there will be more alternatives.
mikelepore	Posted: 31 Oct 2006 09:26 am    Post subject: Quote: Sure it could, but why? Because if socialism includes any activity, then the people doing it can have higher incomes, shorter hours, longer vacations, quicker retirements. If people choose to keep their activities outside of the collective operations, their tools would often have less throughput. I say "often" because I'm not sure if my latter statement would be the case in the example of chickens and eggs, but in some occupations it's clearer to me. Plus, another "why", the one I already mentioned -- with socialism, if you decide you'd like to raise chickens, you don't have to buy any tools or materials first.
mikelepore	Posted: 31 Oct 2006 09:34 am    Post subject: Quote: as far as I am concerned small independent producers and suppliers and servicers can co-exist with the industrial economy. And it will be better because there will be more alternatives. I can see it for one-person operations. A small proportion of occupations are suitable for being one person operations. Would you agree that the idea of "small independent producers" would have less application as we consider operations with several process steps and several work specializations?
davesearles	Posted: 31 Oct 2006 11:04 pm    Post subject: It doesn't necessarily have to be a single person, it can be a family or some kind of extended cooperative group, like a dairy group. Single process, not necessarily. We are already talking about something like a day or two of work a week for maybe 40 weeks a year to produce practically everything that we think we need, less time if we only produce what we really need. If some folks say, you know, we don't mind working two times longer to turn out a product that they really love to produce in the old fashioned way, they ought to be able to do it. And if they can turn out a product that somehow beats the industrial system for efficiency, then industry ought to acquire that product from. Also if industry says, you know we like the idea of having all of these family operated farms, orchards, whatever, and we are willing to pay a premium for that to happen, why not. The idea is that we don't have to allow the efficiency numbers drive absolutely everything.
mikelepore	Posted: 01 Nov 2006 08:28 am    Post subject: I'm okay with the idea. My only apprehensions are about how. As I said, my main question is about funding. Do they have to buy the machinery and supplies? Should the socialist store sell industrial machinery and supplies? I have many lesser priority questions, for example, about health and safety regulations, but those other questions can be handled without too much of a shakeup of my stubborn prejudices about the meaning of socialism. The real "world view" issue for me is about the funding.
mikelepore	Posted: 01 Nov 2006 08:44 am    Post subject: Quote: to turn out a product that they really love to produce in the old fashioned way For that matter, we have never had a coherent idea about how the socially owned industries would start up something new and different. Since my personal background is being a design engineer, I have tended to visualize socialism as a system in which designers would launch what they choose, but with a small volume for prototypes, and then consumer usage would determine whether the volume is ramped up. Seeing it this way, I have argued that the rule "the more they buy, the more we make" is something that capitalism and socialism must have in common. I have also argued that the economic "information" concept of such capitalaist economist as Ludwig von Mises is faulty, because the only genuine "information" transmitted by the market and price system is the signal need for "the more they buy, the more we make", which socialism can also handle with inventory roll measurement. Mentioning this because, if we have never had a clear concept about how socially owned industry would handle such things, then it's difficult to say how these independent producers being discussed here would do things differently. Can't easily say how new proposal Y would likely be different from old proposal X, when we have never been cogent about X.
davesearles	Posted: 01 Nov 2006 02:27 pm    Post subject: The independents however would not so much be doing things differently much pretty much the same way they do it now. In the transition or change to socialism, it would be nice to have a chunk of society that is not going to change, or not going to change overnight. When the revolution comes, farmer John and Jane are still going to go out to the barn at 4:00 a.m. to milk the cows, because that's what they will do until a hurricane or the sheriff takes the farm away. A little stability here and there is to be preferred.
mikelepore	Posted: 01 Nov 2006 09:19 pm    Post subject: Interesting how we respectively approach the question. You continue focusing on the advantages. I continue focusing on mechanism. Say a shop (collectively owned or privately owned) manufactures something and this requires sheet metal, and sheet metal comes from a mill, and the mill gets metal from a refinery, and the refinery gets ore from a mine, and the mine gets machinery from another manufacturer. In the analysis of capitalism and socialism and any other -ism, and in comparisons of one system with the other, I see the anatomy of that process as the tell-all. IMO, nearly all of our enlightment about such issues comes from dissecting a social system to answer this basic question: "How does it come about that the outputs of one workplace end up being the inputs to another workplace?" Give me any new suggestion for a social formation and I won't know how to compartmentalize it in my brain until I can recognize "oh, this is a competitive market", or "oh, this is direct central allocation", or possibly some new anatomy that I haven't yet learned about or thought about.