You're thinking along capitalist market economy lines. Socialism isn't just about making a change in the determination of prices and how people are paid and leaving it at that. If implemented correctly, it's a complete paradigm shift where the rules of capitalist markets no longer apply. When you get down to it, nobody's labour is worth more than anyone else's, excepting for individual variances in productivity and efficiency -- which can be measured and compensated for proportionally.
See, even you admit that labor should be adjusted for productivity. I, however, want it to be based on relative supply and demand as well, which involves tallying the needs that others have of a specific service in relation to their ability to pay and their proclivity to do so at that amount in relation to all other buyers; the amount of that service availability in relation to all other opportunity costs ...
Actually, I'll stop talking about this until you rectify your argument or elucidate it so that, in your opinion, change in labor value is not modified based on consumer spending and demand. I won't try to waste too much breath until you EXACTLY get to how changes in labor value should be done and when.
Also, saying that the system is different, and only that, is not an argument to explain why making decisions in that system is unnecessary/different or computational through formula.
Understandably, you might ask why anyone would want to do something complicated for a living, right? I don't know the root cause of it, but if we look at the Cuban situation, where doctors are not only well-respected but also world-class, we find it is a country with one of the highest number of doctors per capita in the world - despite the fact that there is no real monetary advantage to choosing this potentially difficult job for a living.
Alas, I made my example so obvious that you missed the point. How about we choose between doctors, mechanics, engineers, teachers, and organizers? Cuba has many doctors. Calculate, for me, the opportunity costs between just these five different options for that potential doctor, and make it easier for yourself and imagine that he can be any of those at the same exact skill level as anyone else who can take those jobs as well, and try to do it without any one person paying him directly. Also, have each one cost within 5 percent of each other to train and have all of their skills be equivalent. Or just show me, even in a simplified form, how this can be done.
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Well, I guess you could average all wages, but then why should one dumb person have the same pull as a genius who has the skill to invest in skyscrapers?
This is addressed by paying the individual a full worker's wage to complete their education. You cannot demand a higher wage for becoming an architect if you chose to become an architect out of your own accord and had society pay you for developing your own skills. Of course there would need be a gradual transitory phase*.
That makes no real sense. Are you saying that the sum annual "labor-hour" wages of an architect is equivalent to the labor-hour costs of the work his teachers put into his education and the resources that others put into it, therefore meaning that his value, which is derived purely from the educational costs that others spent to upgrade him from baby to his final state, is only one year? Of course not, but I want to make you actually think.
In a system which would cut out the waste of profit and essentially bring the value of each individual's labour to be worth approximately double the current average (the equivalent of $70,000/year in the USA) and bring down costs of all goods, there isn't much incentive anyway to earn more money for a particular job anyway - you've already satisfied your basic needs, your recreational needs, and then some.
Again, where do socialists get these numbers!?
After, let's say, 200 years of industrialization and fully-fledged capitalism, it is evident that each capitalist only has, basically, 2000 dollars per person in
just money. And that's in the USA, which is quite unequal. Factories and so forth are pretty expensive and require upkeep, and so, because of this reinvestment of profits, the amount of spending increase that can be given to everyone from the capitalist surplus is actually quite minor, after annual reinvestment every year for several centuries. If you think investment right now is at a good level, or should be increased, there is no actual reason why that 2000 dollars per person will not be given again for at least another century. Sure, things like mansions will not be spent any longer, but how could that money even remotely double the spending amounts of others?
Basically, everyone will get a few grand, then get it again when they're ancient.
Are you suggesting a market economy can exist without government interference to keep the system from collapsing? I'm being a little crude and oversimplifying here -- but the purpose of government in a Capitalist market economy is to restrain the market in such a way as to preserve the status quo. Unrestrained, it is "a contest amongst wolves." They'll cannibalise themselves and destroy their own foundations, without any regard for anything except a perceived chance at short-term profit. An economist and former banker explains this much better than myself here.
Yes, you're arguing against everything about me, thus avoiding the responsibility of ever losing to this argument. You're fixated, here, on the subject matters that just aren't pertinent to this discussion; I could beat you here, regarding calculation, but then you'll just say that I'm wrong because I automatically lost a *bigger* argument that we shouldn't even bother to discuss.
Though I understand where your argument against socialism is coming from, I must disagree in that declaring socialism to have failed is akin to having declared (as many did) that the bourgeoisie and capitalism were dead with the defeat of Napoleon.
Why?
So what we are playing with here is a simple question of financial probabilities and potentials. There is then no real value behind any of these determinations -- just the imaginations of men who make it possible. Consequences of a chaotic and directionless market. One could indeed make the argument that such pressures would exist in a socialist economy as well: Should I buy the car or should I not, considering how much the car costs and how much money I have in the bank? The differences would be that the relationships between the costs of items and demand would appear to be much more rational when the only determining force isn't "the market."
Why? You're trying to implement the market for pencils, but when it's done to labor the whole thing becomes chaotic? I'm sensing cognitive dissonance.
Traffic lights are based on the probability of cars going to the intersection, but I still know exactly when it's more convenient for me to move when I see what lights are green.
Revenge is like a poison: if you don’t get enough, you’ll wish you were dead.
I's be's trollingz!