aquaticko

As I said in response to Lumifer's post, the problem is this still leaves it up to chance. We may come to the same conclusions on one thing or another, but that is purely by accident, and if we should begin to come up with different moral axioms, I have no reason to respect his viewpoint if a.) I have no guarantee that he'll respect mine, or b.) I have no axiom which states that I should respect other moral frameworks even if they're different from mine. Certainly, there are many instances in which both parties to a discussion discover an idea they agree upon, but the debate continues because of how the agreement was come upon, when it shouldn't matter.

"I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that "one person's agency or vision" was respected. Do note that people's capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn't care at all about equality or fairness."

That essentially relies on chance. A person's agency is most likely to be respected by me if, by chance, I see that person as roughly my equal. Most people don't worry about violating the agency of a dog nearly as much as they worry about viola... (read more)

"May I suggest a review of the concepts of the map and the territory?"

None is needed; I'm pretty sure that I understand the use of the terms map and territory here. Maps are representations of reality, territories the correspondent reality. I don't argue against this term pairing, in fact I quite like it, and I'm pretty sure I haven't violated them in principle. I was just heading in the direction of arguing that all anyone can ever have is a map, so to speak--I'm fundamentally an epistemological idealist. But this is a discussion we could go on ... (read more)

"Really really :-) Political economy is a description of how the world works. Being a description, it is a map."

I've always thought that ultimately, description is the best that anyone can ever really do. We'll be getting into epistemology if we go down this route any further; your call on whether or not you want to do that.

"Let's do a little gedanken experiment. I hereby give you a piece of paper that represents a share, an ownership claim on your fraction of the global means of production. It is exclusive to you and you control it. Oh, but... (read more)

"Nope, the concerns of a political economy are irrelevant here. The contest is between a map and a territory and the territory always wins."

So, to be clear, you don't believe that political economy is part of the territory? Really??

"Yes, I know. But the argument to popularity is not a good way to evaluate forecasts :-/"

Some people appreciate an appeal to authority, but I don't need one to justify what I said. I'll respond differently to an announcement that you're going to twist my finger, if you tell me before doing so that you'll giv... (read more)

"I did not. You are making a logic error: thinking that { not(A) is_not (B) } necessarily implies { (A) is (B) }. That is not so. Here A="democratic system of governance" and B="public enterprise accountable to the public"."

Fair play, but I think I can clean up the mess I've made there by asking if you consider a democratic government to be a kind of public enterprise. To me this seems like a reasonable assertion: a government elected democratically is beholden to its shareholders (electorate), for whom it must produce a parti... (read more)

"Heh. I think your theory finds itself in contradiction with empirical reality. Sorry, the reality always wins."

It only "wins" if the sole concern of a political economy is economic growth. I've said pretty clearly that no one can deny that, in that sense, it's winning. However, it's doing so by sacrificing human welfare in a way that other systems don't require--pollution, oppression of free expression, miserable working conditions...the list goes on. You're continually looking at the economy as if the only figure that matters is incom... (read more)

"Funny how that hasn't happened under Mao who, presumably, was running a "better" system. And really, is India that resource-poor compared to China? Enough to explain the difference in growth rates?"

No; Mao was essentially running the same system as the USSR: state ownership of the MoP, operated for socialist ends, according to central planning doctrine--the same incentive-less structure for both government and workers. The only thing that's changed was a kind of democratization of the ends--they now had to be somewhat responsive to the... (read more)

"Well, that's the crux of the issue, isn't it? How can you organize the means of production so that they will respond to market information without going capitalist?"

Responded to this in the other comment thread we have going.

"That's an interesting opinion. It's interesting because China's last 20 years represent a colossal success. This "worst of all" system pulled out of poverty many many more people than all the Western charities put together. The Chinese are MUCH better off now than 20 years ago -- thanks to this "the wors... (read more)

I've responded to this specific request in another response on this thread, but my definition of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, operated for public good (however that ends up being defined). Again, if you have time, read that last comment on the post I linked to if you'd like to see more about how market socialism might work.

What I believe has caused the fall of socialism in the past is that most economies which operate socialistically are guided by central planning (typically by a national government). This means that production... (read more)

There's really just six terms I tend to use in order to frame this discussion, which divide into three categories/axes:

1.Ownership of the means of production: this is private or public, the former utilizing private property, the latter dispensing of it.

1. Ends of the means of production: this is capitalist (MoP used for profit) or socialist (MoP used for public good)
2. Rules of the means of production: these are planned (typically state, but could be commune, etc.) or market-oriented (accord with supply/demand)

There have definitely been socialist countries... (read more)

While I do believe that capitalism is necessarily exploitative, my argument doesn't hinge on that opinion.

If you look at what happens in those countries once they begin to implement social welfare policies, economic growth begins to slow dramatically, though it's arguable that the causality is reversed and that welfare policies are enacted when economic growth is already slowed. In either case, welfare policies are a response to the fact that a decreasing rate of economic growth, when not coupled to an equal decrease in the growth rate of the supply of the... (read more)