RE: Hive is socialist

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RE: Hive is socialist

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cryptographic in Deep Dives • 4 years ago

While I understand the generalized and simplified exercise you are engaging in, simplifying and generalizing at the same time can make it even more difficult, if not impossible, to reach a meaningful understanding. There is actually a lot of gray space between the black and white extremes. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their profit (which is distributed to the owners) and can be compared to feudalism or colonialism, but I wouldn’t compare it to communism or socialism, or democracy for that matter. Democracy is a form of government where the people choose their governing authorities. Communism and socialism are philosophical ideas. You can compare democratic extremes though, such as laissez faire capitalistic democratic systems versus socialistic democratic systems. The Scandinavian countries are excellent examples of the second, while pre-antitrust America (and arguably 21st century America as well) is a good example of the first. The Scandinavian example illustrates a very successful ‘blending’ of communism and laissez faire capitalism where a ‘happy medium’ is found: simplifying (again, very dangerous) the private is kept private whereas the public is a shared entity. Socialized medicine is a great example: health and medicine are arguably public goods, not private, but even in that sector there is a mix of private and public practices, and professionals who participate in both. The command economy (and I will end with this) can be either fascist, where control is centralized but the profits are privatized, or communist, where control is also centralized but the profits (if and when they exist) are public and distributed with no rational criteria relating to input.

I disagree with your conclusion that “decentralisation and socialism go hand in hand, and capitalism is in opposition to decentralisation”. If you had said laissez faire capitalism, I might be more inclined to agree, but even then, what if it is laissez faire capitalism within a socialistic regime, i.e. fascism? The decentralization half of your conclusion goes to hell in a hand basket. The main problem here is that apples are difficult to compare to oranges to begin with.

Decentralization = democracy IMVHO. Now, how we organize the economic system within that is another topic, but I will say that the American democracy never did better than when there were antitrust laws, i.e. laws that furthered decentralization of the mean of production and punished the opposing idea of centralized monopolistic behavior.

Whew! A lot said in record time, and extremely deficient as a result, I'm sure – I almost didn’t say anything, but, what the hell, that’s why we’re here and it’s what I hope others will do with what I post, so I decided to make my simplified, generalized attempt too. 😃

4 years ago in Deep Dives by cryptographic

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death-and-taxes 4 years ago

Hive is not privately owned, but rather socially owned. Even joining requires someone who already has stake in the network to burn part of their stake to create your account, that burnt amount permanently becomes part of your account. While ownership is not evenly distributed, that need not be the case for something to be socialist.

You would be able to see this amount for any account on hiveblocks.com, but it's having post-HF24 issues and is down.

Any form of capitalism is in opposition to democracy. People spend between a third and half of their waking lives working, and to say that the form of governance within the workplace doesn't matter is delusional. Not to mention that the logical conclusion of capitalism is one entity having complete control over everything, as it would be in the best interest of any corporation to either buy out the state or create its own state to increase its power.

Workers fought hard and died for many of the liberties people take for granted these days, weekends, a 40 hour work week, a minimum wage. These were all movements against capital, in opposition of capitalism.

The Scandinavian system is not socialism, what they have in place is a welfare state. Workers do not have democratic control of the means of production, therefore it cannot be categorised as any form of socialism. They have social programmes, not socialism.

Under communism, there is no money, class, or state. There has never been a communist society^*. While there have been people who called themselves communist, and even places run by people with communist ideals, again, there has been no communist society.

Fascism can exist regardless of the form of economy, it's characterised by ultranationalism and strict adherence to hierarchy. Fascism is an inherently self destructive ideology.

Capitalism cannot exist within a socialist regime. What you're thinking of is an authoritarian regime, which has nothing to do with the economy.

Any system that favours democratisation will inherently create socialism, as any form of democratically, bottom up, run businesses is socialism.

A planned economy is not necessarily socialist, as market socialism is socialism but has a market based economy.

Market socialism could drop in and replace our existing economic system, the day to day lives of people would not change that much. Most people would see significant increases in pay, and would now have occasional work meetings to vote on business decisions or vote on new management, other than that however there would be very little change. Over time, workplaces would improve as workers will make decisions that make working safer and easier, and productivity would go up.

^{^*Just to cover this point, it may be possible to argue that some prehistoric human civilisations were communist, however that's impossible to prove or disprove. I'm specifically referring to modern human civilisations.}

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cryptographic 4 years ago

One thing I forgot to mention before is that Europe, for example, while being made up a wide mix of regulated capitalistic economic systems (thanks to the varied socialized natures of each government), is democratic.

Democracy is decentralization.

The social economic arrangements are another thing. They are defined and controlled by the governing system, not the opposite.

Here on HIVE, I own my HIVE. It is no one else's, and I don't share it with anyone.

Just like we all own our own home (sooner or later).

But I get the sense that what we're really talking about is whether the local baker gets to call the shots in his bakery or not. As long as he/she puts up the money, I'm inclined to say they deserve to be the boss. On the other hand, when a group of people open a cooperative bakery, I have no problem with that either. That's pure business.

Democracy is another thing. It's the form of governance we choose to regulate and control not just our economic arrangements, but all other social arrangements appropriate for each level of governance, from flat owners who share the cost of roof repairs, to ordinary private citizens who vote for a national health service, both because it is the economically rational thing to do. (The tough part is convincing them. 😂 )

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