"Communism" gameplay system literally doesnt work

[DominusNovus]

Here's the thing: If you own a piece of land, and there is no government to tell you what to do with it... you are the government.

True Feudalism has never been tried!

 

[GrounchoVilla]

True Feudalism has never been tried!

reminds me of a time I went to an anarchist bookfair and asked the author of some book on various anarcho-primitivist and anti-civ thinking how the anarcho-primitivist would respond to the fact that primitive society transitioned to ours for a reason ... if I was to be uncharitable to the account she gave, it was something like "true primitive communism has never been tried" (I cant remember if she was actually one herself or was just writing a book about them this was a long time ago)

 

[icedt729]

Capitalism is private ownership of property (as opposed to government ownership). The more the states interferes with the private ownership, the less "capitalistic" a system becomes. No society has ever banned the state from controlling private property, making them all mixed economies instead of pure capitalist. Pure capitalism is stateless, just like pure communism.

Found one!

There are lots of stateless societies out there, and there used to be even more of them a century or two ago. To my knowledge, none of them practiced anything remotely resembling capitalism.

 

[Panagean]

To stupidly wade into the pointless tide of notifications of this thread...

Capitalism is private ownership of property (as opposed to government ownership). The more the states interferes with the private ownership, the less "capitalistic" a system becomes. No society has ever banned the state from controlling private property, making them all mixed economies instead of pure capitalist. Pure capitalism is stateless, just like pure communism.

I would probably be far closer to your politics than most people in your thread but there are so many balled-up assumptions in this a cat could play with it. What is "private", what is "ownership", what is "property", what is "government"? I should point out that having wasted a good few months of my teenage years reading her, even Ayn Rand believed in a limited role for the state in defining and enforcing (her definitions of) those concepts, implicitly through taxation, a monopoly of legitimate force (except where Dagny Taggart's sublimated sexual preferences were concerned, apparently), and the state ownership of (otherwise potentially productive) resources like land for courtrooms, cars for the police, etc. And surely, if your argument is the case, the first caveman to wander out of their hole and declare this twig "mine" lived in a capitalist utopia, because no-one else contested their ownership of that stick?

True Feudalism has never been tried!

I do think that something people (and also V3 game designers, sometimes, to bring this careening thread back to some vague semblance of relevancy) forget is that people did genuinely believe in the fundamental ethics of "primitive" (that is, conservative) government well into the late 19th century. Frederick Rolfe, a fantastically interesting/strange bloke, has a section in his A History of the Borgias (1901) defending rule-by-bishops (that could more less equally be applied to rule-by-aristocracy) as fundamentally noble in nature, incorruptible from base desires and shaped by generations of experience in a way no slovenly "professional" politician ever could be.

 

[Woifee]

imo if people really wanted to add something which made the game economy work more like the economy irl, add banks and the finance system

Yes. Banks, Stock Exchanges, Currencies, Currency Policies, Inflation, Deflation etc.

 

[Promethium555]

Capitalism is private ownership of property (as opposed to government ownership). The more the states interferes with the private ownership, the less "capitalistic" a system becomes. No society has ever banned the state from controlling private property, making them all mixed economies instead of pure capitalist. Pure capitalism is stateless, just like pure communism.

Can the people downvoting this explain what is wrong with this definition?

 

[merudin]

Can the people downvoting this explain what is wrong with this definition?

According to this definition, the capitalist society cant exist.

Capitalism need state for (at least) defense of the personal property. Which means that state needs to provide functioning justice system. And in order to provide that, the state needs to intervene to economy (collect taxes to pay the policemen, own court and police building...). So no, you actually need state intervention to economy to ensure capitalism, because capitalism only exist because of state intervention (private property) in the first place.

 

[Woifee]

According to this definition, the capitalist society cant exist.

Capitalism need state for (at least) defense of the personal property. Which means that state needs to provide functioning justice system. And in order to provide that, the state needs to intervene to economy (collect taxes to pay the policemen, own court and police building...). So no, you actually need state intervention to economy to ensure capitalism, because capitalism only exist because of state intervention (private property) in the first place.

In "pure" capitalist society every wealthy capitalist is a James Bond Villain with a private Army and a hiden Base in the Alps

 

[Promethium555]

According to this definition, the capitalist society cant exist.

Capitalism need state for (at least) defense of the personal property. Which means that state needs to provide functioning justice system. And in order to provide that, the state needs to intervene to economy (collect taxes to pay the policemen, own court and police building...). So no, you actually need state intervention to economy to ensure capitalism, because capitalism only exist because of state intervention (private property) in the first place.

personal property is the default result of a lack of an organized economic system, if there is no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to own property, then their property is owned by them unless they choose to give it away. You are partially right in that it is beneficial to have a state to enforce private property (and also to prevent things like trusts forming), however private property doesn't NEED a state to exist, it just won't be optimal without so due to a lack of protection. Also, capitalism is a spectrum. Just because someone doesn't want collectivized property doesn't mean they are an anarcho-capitalist.

 

[MrKinich]

personal property is the default result of a lack of an organized economic system, if there is no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to own property, then their property is owned by them unless they choose to give it away. You are partially right in that it is beneficial to have a state to enforce private property (and also to prevent things like trusts forming), however private property doesn't NEED a state to exist, it just won't be optimal without so due to a lack of protection. Also, capitalism is a spectrum. Just because someone doesn't want collectivized property doesn't mean they are an anarcho-capitalist.

Leaving aside the ideological stuff, the idea that private property is just the default state of human existence is empirically wrong; if I were to ask you to imagine the most pure, hyper-capitalist society that has ever existed in history, you would not point to hunter-gatherer tribes or transhumance pastoralists. The most common system of property ownership in such societies is actually communal ownership; the forest doesn’t belong to Frank, it belongs to the whole tribe- that pasture isn’t Karen’s, it’s common land, owned by all.

 

[Promethium555]

Leaving aside the ideological stuff, the idea that private property is just the default state of human existence is empirically wrong; if I were to ask you to imagine the most pure, hyper-capitalist society that has ever existed in history, you would not point to hunter-gatherer tribes or transhumance pastoralists. The most common system of property ownership in such societies is actually communal ownership; the forest doesn’t belong to Frank, it belongs to the whole tribe- that pasture isn’t Karen’s, it’s common land, owned by all.

A village in which people voluntarily agree to share belongings communally for practicality /= a soviet style command eocnomy. "Personal property" simply means that individuals have agency over their own property, not that only corporations own their property, it's a very vague concept that can be applied in a myriad of different systems.

 

[icedt729]

Leaving aside the ideological stuff, the idea that private property is just the default state of human existence is empirically wrong; if I were to ask you to imagine the most pure, hyper-capitalist society that has ever existed in history, you would not point to hunter-gatherer tribes or transhumance pastoralists. The most common system of property ownership in such societies is actually communal ownership; the forest doesn’t belong to Frank, it belongs to the whole tribe- that pasture isn’t Karen’s, it’s common land, owned by all.

Exactly. The "capitalism is the default state of man" theories all hinge on staying frozen in the 18th century, when no European had deliberately studied 'simple' societies and the best we had to go off of were the musings of salon-going philosophes.

We actually have heaps of empirical evidence now and it demolishes the Primitive Capitalist hypothesis. If someone starts taking this line, it just tells me that they've never so much as cracked open an anthropology book and don't plan to.

 

[8ballsam]

Eh. There's plenty of things that are regarded as corruption whether they happen in the private sector or the public sector; nepotism and embezzlement are obvious examples.

Off-topic but I wouldn't consider nepotism and embezzlement as corruption if it's happening in the private sphere. If an employee stole company funds - the company shouldn't have hired him to begin with. If a private company wants to hire based on familial relationships, that's their prerogative.

 

[Haltin]

personal property is the default result of a lack of an organized economic system, if there is no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to own property, then their property is owned by them unless they choose to give it away.

If there's no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to simply ignore your claims of ownership, such claims are kinda meaningless, now aren't they? Property rights are, at their core, about selectively restricting people's abilities regarding some entity, about access control. They are an entirely artificial construct.

So yes, private property, public property or any kind of property need a social power structure capable of infringing on property rights to exist, because in the absence of one the default is "free for all".

 

[grommile]

If a private company wants to hire based on familial relationships, that's their prerogative.

The rules from head office say people are supposed to be hired on merit.

 

[8ballsam]

The rules from head office say people are supposed to be hired on merit.

I'm not sure I understand what that means.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

This is a serious conceptual problem but there are several real-world solutions that have been implemented successfully. The Mondragon Corporation has a built-in credit union which generates capital for establishing new co-ops or investing into existing ones. Obran Cooperative is a "co-op conglomerate" that leverages various types of financing (including private investment) to either found new start-ups or acquire existing firms and turn them into cooperatives. Both are able to compete and grow even in a capitalist economy dominated by privately owned firms.

There are also plenty of models for how investment could be driven in a co-op-based economy, and most of them are pretty straightforward. A good example is David Schweikart's suggestion of a flat tax on capital, with the proceeds funding business loans/grants. It's really not that difficult of a problem from a technical perspective.

It is certainly possible to devise solutions to the problem I described, the issue is whether the solutions will hold up against every incentive to weaken/undermine/abolish them. In any case, I was mainly trying to point out why private ownership naturally prevails in a Non-Communist economy and State Ownership in the Communist economy, because even if you can devise certain solutions to the worker-coop problem, those solutions are not better than simply not having the problem in the first place.

The Mondragon Corporation is not a worker's coop, it is a confederation of said coops. It is basically a government over coops, with it's own seperate beaurocracy and an effective tax rate over it's members. It also suffers from seperatism, with certain coops leaving because they don't want to pay their 'taxes' to support less successful coops.

Exactly. The "capitalism is the default state of man" theories all hinge on staying frozen in the 18th century, when no European had deliberately studied 'simple' societies and the best we had to go off of were the musings of salon-going philosophes.

We actually have heaps of empirical evidence now and it demolishes the Primitive Capitalist hypothesis. If someone starts taking this line, it just tells me that they've never so much as cracked open an anthropology book and don't plan to.

Anthropology is not a substitute for History. Anything we learn about more recent groups of primitive tribes is basically worthless unless logically it can be inferred to have applied to the particular ancestors of ourselves as well.

However we have to remember that two things apply to those groups that don't apply to our ancestors.

1. Unlike our ancestors, these primitives 'got stuck' at a certain 'level of development' for some reason while our ancesters progressed further.
2. These primitives have now been around for a lot longer than our ancestors were at the time they were similarly primitive.

Their lack of or deviance of certain institutions in the present, can, rather than being seen as typical of primitive societies in general, instead be seen as either the cause of their remaining continual primitive state or the result of political change over time.

It is quite possible that our distant ancestors were more like ourselves than primitive society in the present. It is possible that political change derailed other societies ancestors from the universal path of expansion and development but since our ancestors resisted said changes, they continued to advance.

personal property is the default result of a lack of an organized economic system, if there is no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to own property, then their property is owned by them unless they choose to give it away. You are partially right in that it is beneficial to have a state to enforce private property (and also to prevent things like trusts forming), however private property doesn't NEED a state to exist, it just won't be optimal without so due to a lack of protection. Also, capitalism is a spectrum. Just because someone doesn't want collectivized property doesn't mean they are an anarcho-capitalist.

In the absence of an Authority, Private Property cannot exist in any objective sense. You then have only people's subjective opinions as to what they own and the present physical holder of the property's opinions are no more valid than anyone else's.

 

[Haltin]

Off-topic but I wouldn't consider nepotism and embezzlement as corruption if it's happening in the private sphere.

Corruption is a problem due to its effects, which are the same whether it happens in the public or private sphere, so it seems pretty pointless to try to distinguish them.

If an employee stole company funds - the company shouldn't have hired him to begin with.

Yes, what fool makes decisions without consulting a fortune teller first?

If a private company wants to hire based on familial relationships, that's their prerogative.

And using that prerogative will lead to a lower efficiency compared to making hiring or promoting decisions based on competence. It also motivates competent people to move elsewhere, and promotes general cynicism towards the system, thus eventually leading to instability.

 

[grommile]

I'm not sure I understand what that means.

Head office in London say you're supposed to hire people based primarily on their ability to do the job.

In an act of nepotism/cronyism, the branch office manager in Nether Upton hires his cousin/brother/old school chum in preference to several people who would actually be better at the job.

 

[Haltin]

Anthropology is not a substitute for History. Anything we learn about more recent groups of primitive tribes is basically worthless unless logically it can be inferred to have applied to the particular ancestors of ourselves as well.

However we have to remember that two things apply to those groups that don't apply to our ancestors.

1. Unlike our ancestors, these primitives 'got stuck' at a certain 'level of development' for some reason while our ancesters progressed further.
2. These primitives have now been around for a lot longer than our ancestors were at the time they were similarly primitive.

Their lack of or deviance of certain institutions in the present, can, rather than being seen as typical of primitive societies in general, instead be seen as either the cause of their remaining continual primitive state or the result of political change over time.

It is quite possible that our distant ancestors were more like ourselves than primitive society in the present. It is possible that political change derailed other societies ancestors from the universal path of expansion and development but since our ancestors resisted said changes, they continued to advance.

The problem with this is that modern humans first appeared over 200,000 years ago, while agriculture only appeared some 10,000 years ago. That means that our ancestors spent around 95% of our history as hunter-gatherers. So we can not conclude that current primitives are "stuck", because 5% variance at the rate of progress is well within the realm of random chance.

It's also worth noting that for most of our history since the invention of agriculture life for most people was actually worse than before, and even now that isn't necessarily false. Let's not forget that a large factor driving American immigration was the possibility to get away from established societies and economic structures and live relatively free on your own. So the question isn't so much why some people remained at hunter-gatherer state, but what catastrophe forced our ancestors into the miserable existence of serfs.