Schmoo comments on its the best we have

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 point 6 months ago (3 children)

The main benefit of capitalism is the free market that it establishes. But it requires regulation to prevent control being centralizes by private oligarchs.

The "free market" and regulations are mutually exclusive. You can't have both, unless you consider a "free market" to exist on a spectrum between no regulations and maximum regulations and draw an arbitrary line between free and not free.

Communism has the same problem of central control of capital and markets, but in their case, its state connected oligarchs.

This is an issue with vanguardist marxism-leninism, not necessarily communism. I understand that this is the ideological strain of communism that people - especially Americans - are most familiar with for historical reasons, but there are many other strains that oppose centralized command and control economies, preferring more federal and democratic or consensus-based systems. In fact, the Bolsheviks initially rallied around the slogan "all power to the soviets." Soviets are workers' councils - the primary decision-making bodies and drivers of the Russian revolution - and they operated independently, freely associating with one another by choice. It was only after the revolution succeeded in siezing the state that the soviets were dissolved and replaced with "one big soviet" which was loyal to Lenin. It was briefly still somewhat decentralized and democratic (at least relative to what came before) until Stalin came to power and rapidly centralized the economic and political structure of the soviet union.

If we could have the free market without the incentives to centralize wealth and control, I would be very interested.

What exactly do you mean by "free market?" If we go by the conventional definition of a free market (capitalism without any regulations or checks of any kind) then what you're asking for here is fundamentally impossible. The economic system of capitalism is one that creates the incentives to centralize wealth and control by allowing - and then enforcing - private ownership of the means of production.

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[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 1 point 6 months ago* (2 children)

I think it important to distinguish between a free trade market, which should be largely unregulated. People should be able to buy and sell goods on an open market.

Capital markets, or ownership and control of wealth should be heavily regulated.

Derivatives should be outlawed and stock trading should have minimum asset holding periods of 24 months or more. Return it to a platform for making investments and raising capital, rather than a gambling and market manipulation platform.

I would also change the law that the duties of publicly traded company's board and executives is not profit, but the long term sustainability of the organization.

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[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

I think it important to distinguish between a free trade market, which should be largely unregulated. People should be able to buy and sell goods on an open market.

Capital markets, or ownership and control of wealth should be heavily regulated.

Huh, what's interesting about this is that you've basically arrived at a communist/anarchist idea on your own, but are describing it using Libertarian / Neoliberal Capitalist terminology. You're describing different types of property and saying that one type should be regulated and the other type shouldn't. Anti-capitalists distinguish between private property (the means of production privately owned and involved in an economic enterprise employing wage labor (i.e. factories, offices, farms)) and personal property (consumer goods or goods produced by an individual (i.e. books, art, jewelry)), and believe that the former should be abolished (or one could say regulated to require collective ownership of such property by the workers) while the latter should be unregulated or lightly regulated.

In short, you've independently come to the same conclusion that anarchists and communists came to, but are describing it in a strange way.

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[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 1 point 6 months ago

I am not well versed in the terminology of Marx, but I do think given the age, it can do with some updating for modern times.

I am not sure you need to distinguish between private and personal property.

I think how I would describe it, is that you get physical goods and services that should be largely unregulated. First order trade.

But when it comes to derived or abstracted goods, like shares, investments, currencies, they should be regulated to ensure they stay closely tied to the physical assets they represent.

In terms of property, I do see some issues when as automation and knowledge becomes more prominent as a means of production, we will need to switch to a different way of thinking.

Something along the lines where knowledge becomes public domain knowledge much sooner than under current laws.

Then approaching taxation of private property and corporations differently, where they are taxed based on the value of assets. You would also stop taxing on revenue and profit. This way they will always have and incentive to make sure they are using assets effectively, or selling it and not just squat on it, to prevent others from having it. Those taxes would then be used to fund universal basic income.

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