Imagine you could pass any law or regulation in a capitalist society in order to make it more socialist.
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Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:If we imagine a world of exchanges between people in a communistic society and a capitalist society I think that the communist exchange types are a subset of the capitalist exchange types. There are exchanges you can make in capitalist economies that you would not be able to make in a communist economy. Most of them involving money and profiteering. So capitalism is more free than communism in the sense that it allows for more types of exchanges. The Communism has a reduced set of exchanges allowed because to be communistic the exchange must meet certain requirements.
There is not a subset of capitalist relations in socialist society. It is a revolutionary (completely different) society. Capitalism does not offer more exchange it requires exchange as it is an unequal access society.Socialism does not require or need exchange except in the limited sense Robin stipulates, i.e. exchanging ideas, has free access to ideas, resources, yes even intellectual resources as these are freely given and freely accessed.
Matt wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:If we imagine a world of exchanges between people in a communistic society and a capitalist society I think that the communist exchange types are a subset of the capitalist exchange types. There are exchanges you can make in capitalist economies that you would not be able to make in a communist economy. Most of them involving money and profiteering. So capitalism is more free than communism in the sense that it allows for more types of exchanges. The Communism has a reduced set of exchanges allowed because to be communistic the exchange must meet certain requirements.There is not a subset of capitalist relations in socialist society. It is a revolutionary (completely different) society. Capitalism does not offer more exchange it requires exchange as it is an unequal access society.Socialism does not require or need exchange except in the limited sense Robin stipulates, i.e. exchanging ideas, has free access to ideas, resources, yes even intellectual resources as these are freely given and freely accessed.
That was badly written by me. Let me try clarifying. I'm using common language in my writing not marx speak. so if I say words like "exchange" I'm talking about any trade or exchange of value. my reasoning is also framed in a behavioral economics context so think of the words in terms of behavioral economics mostly if you need a frame of reasoning for understanding key terms I use. I don't much care what you're idea of socialism does or does not need because people here tell me socialism doesn't exist and won't exist untill 50% of the population magically decide to make it that way, and then apparently there's nothing left to do or think about and people tell me there's no such thing as exchange in a post socialist revolution economy. So either you show me an example of a functional socialist society for reference to consider that actually exists, or I think you're just talking about a fantasy world socialism that doesn't exist and never will. I'm proposing something I'm calling "comunism" for lack of a better word. So I'm arguing from a context of real world what we can do today feasibility type thinking, not asking if this meets the definition of some hypothetical socialist economy that most people say can't and won't ever exist. Let me state again, that I don't think time value exchange is a magic want to make the world socialist over night. That's not the argument I want to discuss and it's been settled already. Time value exchange is a revolutionary change in our exchange economy that is worth study and consideration by socialist, but it's not socialism. Anyway, What I meen to do is compare the capital value cash trading exchange practices Vs comunism time value trading practices and think about what rules each of them support or make impractical. In cash for property value exchange, their are lots of externalities that invariably get paid for by the individual. The customer is forced to pay outside the formal cash for product agreement with the customers time (ever been on hold for customer service and wonder why you aren't paid for waiting for them?) or another externality is pollution that is not included in the sale price and gets paid unwillingly by the general public. The Rules of an exchange seem to be that if you trade in capital value then all things except capital value become externalities and are generally exploited. So people end up short on time in a capital value exchange system because the customers timeusage is not part of most exchange agreements. Except for labor agreements, there's few capital exchange agreements that consider the time spent as relevant to an exchange and most cashier receipts don't mention anything about your time waiting in line to buy or your time in reading the instructions or the sellers time in providing customer service. Most of the words in most agreements are stipulated by product missuse. like you can not disasemble the phone, or can't change cell phone reception separate from the phone. . In a capitalist property exchange, time usage is an externality that is not generally counted in the exchange decision. In a time value exchange, property ownership is an externality that is not generally counted in the exchange decision. In socialism there is no exchange. It seems like there's no adequate explanation for how people make exchanges of time or efforts in socialism. They contribute freely in principle, but the mechanism of how they would actually spend 10 minutes contributing to something shared they want is not specified. So I think socialism as you define it can only consider time value exchange as a step along the path they want society to follow or a step off that path. How does a person in you're hypothetical socialist society contribute to building a road? In 10 minutes how do they make that commitment of their future time spent on the effort? Do they fill out a contribution of time form? Do they vote and if so how and when exactly. Pretend I'm living in a socialist society and I want to contribute to building a road to my neighborhood. How do I coordinate with others? or is there no ability to plan and organize in socialism?
some rambling details below here that are of no interest if you disagree on principle with the discussion.
in capitalism only cash and property are carefully controlled by exchange rules and laws. All other things are externalities with no record of how they are affected or exchanged in by the agreeemnt. Externalities are things that "don't count" in an exchange. Some examples of externalities in a capitalist exchange environment are like global environement, how people spend their time using products or cash, or weather this exchange hurts the local economy or helps it. So for example, there's no guarantee when you buy a product with cash that you're going to spend an hour using the product to make the local park green even if you are buying a watering hose. The receipt doesn't say what you will use the watering hose for and when you purchase the hose at the gardening store with cash, they ask or include on the reciept much about how you use the hose. You could use it to water the grass in the park, or you could use the hose to pump sewage into the river. It doesn't matter to the capitalist value cash for product exchange rules and and accountabilty tracking.In a time value exchange, we have a situation where we're building the exchange system and can write in any rules we want to make it work the way we want. This is a limited time opportunity because technology couldn't enforce exchange agreements about time feesibly until just in the last 10 or 20 years. Google docs and distributed web technologies allow us to build a system of voting and public exchange sytem that's truly public and offers participartor rule making and individual exchange rule making. So with a time value exchange you can write your own rules for any exchange and you also write your own rules for enforcing the exchange and you also write your own rules for what you are exchanging, with whom. . .
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