mum wrote:No it wouldn't. People are not stupid like you think. People like to get along with each other and trade with each other, they always have, they always will.
I agree that people do like to get along with each other and trade with each other, which is why I think a gift economy would work. What I disagree about is your notion that they "always have, always will" because it's pretty obvious that when you threaten a person's basic needs, they stop being so concerned about others and concerned about trading. They become a lot more interested in taking. Well, capitalism is a threat against a person's basic needs. It is psychologically distorting. It leads people to all sorts of awful behavior. It leads to one person letting another person die to save a dollar.
People are
not as stupid as you think.
So you are saying the state is what stops people from starving to death ? Serious ? Really ?
The state is what keeps people from starving to death under capitalism, yes. There is no free market for food; there can't be, because we would starve if we allowed such a critical aspect of human existence to be ruled by the free market. In the same way that we don't allow a free market for transportation, electricity, water, urban sewage service, etc.
The state isn't necessary to keep people from starving to death; it is required to keep capitalism from starving people to death. Ironically this state protection of human beings from the impact of capitalism is what helps to keep capitalism from destroying itself. It's kind of bizarre that capitalists actually argue
against this balance.
Lets hope so !
Sure, it provides an excellent opportunity for socialists. I mean, if the market anarchists can succeed, they will bring capitalism to an end, leaving socialists an opportunity to rebuild. Incidentally, this is related to a broader argument about dual power strategies. This possibility is one of many reasons why socialists ought to pursue a dual power strategy--to provide for industrial and social continuity when the capitalists fail.
wha ?? So the functions of the state get privatized than bam! society falls apart. Do you have any reasoning for this absurd idea ?
It sounds about right from a theory standpoint, and seems to adhere to admitted limited historical examples. Privatization does not work, so it would not be much of a stretch to assume that total privatization would lead to total failure. What "market anarchists" have always failed to recognize is that the state is what supports capitalism; that capitalism can't exist without a state protecting a capitalist system.
Really?? who is "they"
Obviously referring to capitalists unfettered by the state.
It is in socialist/communist countries where R&D is severely limited (if any).
There hasn't been a socialist/communist country yet. Even the Soviet Union was self-admittedly a state capitalist system. But sure, let's go with it anyway. They put a lot of R&D effort into a wide range of things, from efficient transportation infrastructure, cheap housing, and cost-effective medicine for all to space travel and theoretical physics. I think it's probably better to say that the R&D in state-capitalist states gets focused on different priorities. Capitalists focus on R&D in trivial matters, like innovative new drugs to give someone a boner, or phones that present maps in 3d rather than 2d projections. State-capitalists have historically focused on mega projects and shared-experience-goals like the space race or warfare. One would assume that socialists would probably focus R&D on goals like the democratization of industry, efficient organizational structures, pervasive education, distributed manufacturing, and social services.
Commies keep going on about the R&D in Russia but that was in a small segment of industry and the rest of society was forced to get by with pretty much zero innovation in their day to day lives, for many years.
Sure, but the Soviet Union was also starting from destitute poverty in what amounted to a mainly peasant society. They had to do things like bootstrap an industrial economy--and they are still the only example of a country that industrialized itself within a generation--fight a bunch of wars of necessity on their own territory, and contend with an immense amount of international hostility and isolation from international trade. State capitalism under the Soviet model worked a lot better for the Soviet Union than capitalism under the US model has worked for, you know, states like Colombia, or Guatemala.
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