this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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For me it is more that capitalism is good at solving certain kinds of problems, but fails at others. Moore's law is an example where imo capitalism did a pretty great job at innovating and pushing the limits. Counter examples can e.g. often be found in healthcare, where treating something chronic might be more lucrative then aiming for a cure.
The problem to be solved: research production of better chips.
Market mode: Researchers in several companies do research, experiment, optimize to beat each other, restricted share of information, profit
Brain mode: researchers coorperate, plan research process and personel in terms of efficient research.
The market inscentived chip research a lot because it was profitable, a lot. That was because it is actual usefull innovation. Other organisations of economy (shoutout to democratic socialism) would of course still have experts in their industries, understanding that microchips are important to research and advice society to direct ressources accordingly. And those could be used more efficiently.
But yeah, there might be situations in wich a society says no because they need to build a hospital for humanity reasons.
What are the mechanisms for resource allocation, prioritization and incentivization in your "brain mode"? And who decides on everything? Those are actually really difficult problems to solve and i think your "advice society to direct ressources accordingly" is easier said then done. Sure in an ideal world humanity is peacefully working together as a whole, knows how to allocate resources efficiently and everyone is motivated, but is that something that can realistically exist?
I am not calling for full blown liberal capitalism, but the market aspect has it's upsides. In that sense i like that you used the wording "market mode", since that is probably the aspect i meant more than capitalism in general. And i think at least historically it has faired pretty well against a competing concept like planned economies (which your concept seems closer to), although ofc those were far from a great implementation. But this kind of shows how hard it can be in practice.
Imo what we really fail with at the moment is setting the right constrains and rules. Just because e.g. our patent/copyright system is broken doesn't mean there couldn't be a better version that does allow information to flow faster.
First, It's definetly easier said then done. Trust me, I've said it multiple times and didn't manage to do it even once.
Ok, basically it boils down to dialectics. Different organization of humans alters humans in mind and behaviour. Human nature is not fixed, we're freakin flexible and largely formed by our circumstamces, which mainly consist of human made structures, options, etc.
I stupidly say brainmode to point towards the possibility of rationality in both individuals and society (just one does not work great). Meaning we'd understand someone needs to clean that toilet and if everyone feels more or less integrated/seen and is regularily part of collective subjectivities, people will say fine to cleaning the bathroom from time to time. All that only happens when society is both socialist and democratic. Being hold at gunpoint or cleaning that toilet under thread of starving makes you do it, but you will need to be "incentivized" for ever, because the reality of your praxis is in fact not solidarity or reason, but force.
Collective reason does not grow in individualist praxis. Neither does the will to do shit for free or for others.
The question of possibillity is indeed a question of history. Socialism as the more-human concept without democracy was a shit idea all along. And the left in the ussr knew, they just lost.
The individual we find in this social order is a frightened, humiliated, heart-cooled-down, thus egoistic one. Its the only configuration that brings you through life in capitalism (yes of course its not deterministic, there is some slack etc). Subjectivity is misinterpreted as individualism, while in fact we act as kollektives, we pretend not to, for the sake of a misguided concept of freedom. I am convinced people are able to understand that and "feel it". The tricky part is it needs a change in real world options for these ideas to make practical sense. And it needs those ideas to create those options (i.e. changing social structure) there you have dialectic thinking, wich is appropriate for humans and their history, imo.
And by the way, I could well imagine democratic socialism where allocation and production are mainly planned according to the needs of people, with high degrees of self government etc. wich still uses market-like-incentives in exceptional cases, like boring jobs really no one wants to do (cleaning that toilet for example). But it wouldnt be market principles structuring economy, just society saying "alright, no one wants to take care of festival toilets, so if you do it you get a reward"
Thanks for taking the time to write all of this. You do have good points and i would say that i can agree with a lot of what you write, but where it falls a bit apart for me is the last paragraph.
If i get this right this is somewhat of a top down approach and i just can't really see that working on a large scale. To me you can set broad goals and general rules/constraints, but you can't plan all the way down. So after a certain level you just kind of need a system that somewhat works on its own. And for that market economics just seem like the efficient solution.
Right now it seems to me like we are particularly failing in setting the rules/constraints, e.g. damage from CO2 emmisions not being properly priced in.
Seems to be that boring jobs aren't really exceptional cases, but the majority.
And some jobs might not be boring for some, but not everyone. However you'll likely still have a certain amount of people that need to fill those jobs (and be qualified to do so), and for those even these better jobs will be annoying. Basically only a certain set of jobs will be interesting for each person, but those interests will almost certainly not match up with what is demanded from the economic side.
You're welcome. Thanks for taking the time for consideration.
Maybe I wasn't clear about it, but I don't really imagine a top down approach, but a large scale integration of people in decision making and -understanding. This sounds overly optimistic regarding the human subject we have now. But a actually democratic society would, as I dialectically argue, let other kinds of subjectivity emerge. Especially letting go of the idea, everyone acts in their own interest (wich is the objective reality and concept of markets). Talking collective subjectivity..
This same, quite fundamental change of how we relate to each other, to society, how we decide thus think and how we percieve and approach work in general, would change what "a boring job" really is. Beeing motivated to work because it makes sense to you, and working in a soldary working culture, instead of this alienated, competitiv indifference ("money rules the world"), would definetly make we clean those toilets, knowing work is shared fairly and I get to enjoy a human society afterwards :)
Like, doing something boring for people you care about is a whole different experience.
In the end, of course, we're talking utopia: by definition a world that doesn't exist, that cannot yet exist. So there's limits to imagining it "as realistic". Still, cultivating utopia is important, because why else, if not for hope, would you reach for radical change?