A world beyond Capitalism

@Thinkerbell Actually I am quite in favour of the Soviet Union. Violent Crackdowns were unecessary but hadn't there been a cold war and instead cooperation among socialist states the outcome would have been different.

@Emosaur How has someone directly died as a result of capitalism?

@Emosaur so ‘capitalism’ forced ambulances to not go out? In the socialist state of the UK, people die waiting for an ambulance because people can call one to be sent out over absolutely anything and then the people who really need urgent help don’t get it in time and die.

@pianoplayingsteve capitalism relies on hierarchy. For someone to be at the top and a billionaire, someone has to be at the bottom.

Capitalism is directly responsible for most cases of homelessness, starvation, neocolonialism and child labour.

@pianoplayingsteve It's easy to point fingers at authoritarians in power that commit violent acts but systemic issues and violence that leads to deaths and suffering like in the capitalist system are easily overlooked.

@pianoplayingsteve [quote]the socialist state of the UK[/quote]
You what?

@basilfawlty89 All the large scale attempts at socialist states have also being strongly hierarchical. The revolution depends on strong people to drive it but the organizational structures necessary to make the change don't magically disappear afterwards, people with power are reluctant to give it up.

@ninalanyon [quote]socialist states[/quote]

And that's where the problem is. The shouldn't be a socialist state, because the state shouldn't exist. Dismantle both the state and capitalism and it can work.

@basilfawlty89 You'll have to explain your definition of state before I can agree or disagree.

Mine is simply the apparatus necessary to provide a an environment in which people can safely interact with each other and not be trampled on by every little strongman. That is, the provision of some sort of legal system and the means to arbitrate and enforce decisions.

This, or something with similar effect, needs to exist regardless of whether or not we have nation states.

@ninalanyon the state, as in a centralised, hierarchical institution with a monopoly on the use force and fixed borders.

What we seek to replace with is a voluntary federation or confederation with direct democracy.

@basilfawlty89 Direct democracy? Part of the reason for the success of modern states is that I no longer have to make a huge number of important decisions all the time because the existence of representatives and civil servants relieve me of the necessity.

As Alfred North Whitehead said in An Introduction to Mathematics
[quote]Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.[/quote]

I don't really disagree with the idea of a greater degree of direct democracy. But it is difficult to avoid a tyranny of the majority and entrenchment of inequality caused by people voting along ethnic or religious lines.

As for voluntary federation, that sounds like the existence of states, probably large numbers of small ones. That worked really well in the 16th and 17th century Germanies didn't it?

I agree that what we have now is not ideal anywhere in the world but it seems that most of the radical suggestions suffer from many of the same problems that already exist in the current systems.

@ninalanyon are you really represented though? Or do you elect someone to misrepresent you every few years from a political party that is backed by the rich?

As to your claims of confederations not working, Switzerland is one and is fine. It's also a semi direct democracy.

@basilfawlty89 I doubt that I am represented very well. But I still don't see how any plausible version of direct democracy [i]necessarily[/i] would be better.

Here is an interesting summary of the Swiss system: https://250bpm.com/blog:161/. It sounds very attractive, except for the huge amount of referenda to vote on :-) I suspect that it works in Switzerland for Swiss reasons, that is it is an organic evolution contingent on many inter-related and unrelated events. I suspect that instituting such a system elsewhere would be extremely difficult.

Switzerland had the advantage in the beginning of being a small country that was already a federation of small cantons. The UK for instance is nearly six times the area and about eight times the population with no division into self governing areas.

Something that works for a population of about six million citizens won't necessarily work for a population eight times the size in a country plagued by inequalities of many kinds. See this page in The Guardian for the geographical distribution of Brexit voting: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/23/eu-referendum-live-results-and-analysis. It's clear that if the UK had been several countries of the population size of Switzerland then at least two of them would have remained in the EU (London and Scotland).

I think the Swiss system could be good but I suspect that the journey from where most countries are now to that ideal would be extremely difficult. It also occurs to me that the conditions that make such a system desirable for the people on the inside also favour the growth of monolithic superstates on the outside. Imagine if you will that all the states that border Russia were Swiss style cantonal confederations. How would the world avoid allowing Putin to swallow them one at a time?

You've goaded me to think a little, thank you.

@Emosaur You really dont understand what a strawman argument is. You claimed first that capitalism stops ambulances coming out. I said that socialism slows down how quickly ambulances can come out to the point that people miss out on vital services. Both arguments are making a claim about the availability of ambulances from opposite points of view.

The fact that you call my argument about ambulances a strawman displays that in reality you just throw a label of a logical fallacy at anything you just dont like to shut down honestly addressing it. No one strawmanned in this instance because no one made a claim about the other's view on the topic. You just seem to throw that term around to dismiss anything that isn't so easy for you to argue against.

@pianoplayingsteve your solution to prevent people who might not need urgent help to access ambulances is to make them expensive?
You know that panic attacks for example can feel like a heart attack. People suffering from it might not need one but how should they be able to tell the difference.

@Emosaur "This further confirms my theory that the right is intellectually unable to grasp the concept of fallacies and will keep randomly throwing around terms they've picked up from the left."

Yep, you already had your conclusion to begin with, based on your preconceived biases and are now congratulating yourself on confirming your own biases by playing word games with yourself.

"Accusing me of not understanding strawman arguments and then strawmanning my argument - oh, the irony..." Pointing out that you don't understand a term is not "strawmanning". Strawmanning an argument is simply misrepresenting an argument and then arguing against this misrepresentation. I never presented an argument, I merely pointed out that you dont understand a term, as evidenced here.

Yes, the UK is a socialist state, which I've lived in for 29 years. It has socialised education, surgeries, mental health treatment, housing, old age care, disability welfare, unemployment welfare, over 50% of transactions in the UK are state transactions, £15,000,000,000 is spent on the NHS per month. Sales tax of 20%. Income tax of 20-40% (and not so well known legal loopholes can raise that to 60%), property tax, , national insurance, excise duties on alcohol and tobacco, corporation tax, stamp duty, council tax, sugar tax, carbon emissions tax. It goes on.

@Gloomy If you could quote me as saying I think we should make ambulances more expensive? I'd like quite the opposite. I'd rather the price of healthcare doesn't skyrocket by having to cover the cost of an endless number of taxes.

"You know that panic attacks for example can feel like a heart attack. People suffering from it might not need one but how should they be able to tell the difference." I'm aware of how that works, I've worked as a part time first responder for a decade. Neither do I have an issue with that, we always say if you aren't sure, then call an ambulance as it could be fatal, heck we may even find you have an underlying condition that hasn't been treated, when we do a primary and secondary survey of your health.

My issue is with the massive amounts of people who call out ambulances who dont need them, and the general stress put on the service by fact of it being socialised and on order to absolutely everyone.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55581006

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/ambulance-call-outs-cost-millions-sore-throats-false-nails-a8299306.html

Not to mention the not so immediately obvious domino effects this all has.

@Emosaur And I'm sure you've observed that every single person who agrees with your left wing views are intelligent and have great ideas, and that when you come to talk to other people with left wing views, you find they are smart and argue well.

"But if it's a socialist state... then how come it's not?" Because as with everything thus far, you don't understand the terms you are using. The UK is one of the most socialist, left leaning countries in Europe. Even very left leaning friends I have admit that it's going a bit ridiculously left and starting to cause more issues than its solving.

@pianoplayingsteve Nordic countries would be a better example for left leaning policies but you gotta be insane to call the UK socialist. Don't tell me you actually believe a right wing government and a still existing monarchy are signs of socialism? And welfare is not socialist. Social policies exist and that's good. Finland would be an example of a great Social Democratic country.

@Gloomy Ah, you are into the right-left paradigm. It doesn't matter whose in charge, in the UK, the same socialist policies will be rolled out. Just, the "right wing" parties will pretend to be against it, but only ever give lip service to fighting against the most safe left wing talking point to criticise.
Yeah I listed more than just welfare. The amount of tax, welfare, regulations etc are so high that over half of all spending in the UK is done by the government, alone. It's socialist, I dont know why you have an issue with that. Is it that you don't like the UK, but you like socialism and so deny that the UK is socialist?
There is still business freedom, you could say there is a mixed economy, but trust me, as someone who has lived in the UK, and has now moved to some place where there isn't anything past a 6% flat tax rate, you notice how socialist the UK is.