Capitalism wouldn't have anything to do with people freely choosing to organize as a cooperative.
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Is capitalism destroying gaming?
- Thread starter Suicide King
- Start date
Noted. Although it is semantics when the vast majority of the country are party members whether voluntarily or due to it being mandatory.
Unless it is state run, even then corruption/bureaucracy is typically rampant, someone will be skimming from the top and a middle person will be skimming directly from the employees for the services they render.
The question comes down to who determines fair wages and on what basis. What persons have the knowledge to determine these things across countless industries and positions within them?
Begging for free rides?
Do you even know what socialism is about or are you going to keep spreading right-wing talking points. My local fascist group gives out these same talking points and they are just as tiring as you present them here.
Socialists never want anything for free, but rather understand that there's a lot, and I mean a whole fucking lot of resources around to ensure some basic rights for people. Whether that's transport for some, it could be argued, but things like healthcare (which has bankrupted many middle class families), and housing, socialists believe that people shouldn't have to work 2 full time jobs, while there's a person who's becoming a trillionaire who hardly works. And that's without mentioning that some of these people who work 2 full time jobs have to worry about being killed by the forces who keep these millionaires safe from riots.
It's funny you mention that we'll be fighting for clean water, because that's literally capitalism's fault. I mean ecosocialism is a thing. Can't wait to know if you're one of those who thinks that humanity is a virus (which is an ecofascist talking point), when it's the top 10% who does most of the environmental destruction.
I mentioned harvesting, transforming and shipping. You decided to focus on harvesting to insinuate that because agriculture can be automated, there's not scarcity of food. I'm saying that while doing that, you're ignoring all the scarce resources and skills that were required to get to that point, and the ones required to bring the food to the consumers. And that most if not all the people involved will want retribution for their involvement in the process, especially those doing the shitty jobs.
Now when robots manage to extract 50 different minerals, produce electricity, build a tractor, build a cargo container ship, build roads, drive a train, clean an office, calculate the amount of fertilizer needed, put corn in a box and deliver it to each consumer, all on their own, I'll start believing in your post-scarcity dream.
Sure, that's a fair criticism of any human-run system. But that's not inherent to socialism.
Perhaps we should take a look at the culture that has built this culture of people wanting to become more rich or powerful, which socialism and communism aims to take down.
Is such thing even possible? Who knows! But it's definitely worth the try.
This reminds me of a James Baldwin quote: "I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive."
I see many attacking or discussing with fellow posters in intricacies that are still being discussed by socialist academics. Chances are, most of the socialist/communist/anarchist/left-wing brothers and sisters you are talking to are blue-collar workers and not academics who will have these answers. This does not mean that you owned them, and that socialism or communism as an economic system has been absolutely defeated. It simply means that we don't know the answers, probably because academia on the topic is quite dense, and we got to work our asses off just to live from each salary barely. Meaning that we don't have the time to study such answers. If y'all be willing to read 30-page studies and essays on this, I'm sure some comrades would be more than happy to give them out. Perhaps take that in account when engaging others in this topic. (I don't mean this to you specifically Kill3r)
I thought they were mostly insurance or banking 😄
What makes you think people wouldn't want more stake in their work? Is that an assumption or does it come from somewhere specific?
It's funny you should talk about reliability here. Cooperatives are more economically resilient; twice as likely to survive the first five years compared to other business models. Interesting stuff here.
What makes you say that?
Are cooperatives, by design, not capable of complex operations? Any evidence for that about?
There's loads of them, right now, in around a hundred or so countries. The top 300 have a couple of trillion dollar turnover or something.
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None taken.
Personally, I have few qualms with socialism, I will admit I am biased against communism but that has more to do with family history. I would like to note that these threads fall prey to socialism being discussed only under ideal conditions/outcomes and capitalism being discussed only under its worst conditions/outcomes. It's interesting that you mention Baldwin because iirc when he met Elijah Mohammed he thought the Nation's plan was absolute nonsense and couldn't work. I am partial to capitalism because it is the "ism" I am most familiar with and the one I have been building my life to survive/succeed in. That is not to say that we cannot do better or that we shouldn't reassess our way of life.
Sure, but I want to specify that money and markets aren't exclusive to capitalism, and I don't just mean "regulated capitalism", but "real" full blown socialism is fully compatible with those two things.
So you're mainly arguing against Anarcho-Communism, no state and no money, right? I believe one of the points Anarcho-Communists would make is that there would be less total work, since the goal would be to meet what the community needs, not to maximize profits. For example, if farmers in the US overproduce food today, they could theoretically work less while still meeting the needs of the population in a Anarcho-Communism world.
Also, sucky jobs won't suddenly stop sucking, I don't think an Anarcho-Communist would argue that. You would still need to work for a living - it's just that "working for a living" would mean working to keep your community functioning instead of paying rent. Instead of farming to make money, farm to feed people. Why would you do a sucky job in this system? Maybe a requirement to live in a particular community is that everyone has to spend a month as the garbage man on a rotating basis among all the citizens? But that's just an idea I'm throwing out there.
I don't think a middle man is the antithesis of a socialist system. If a democratically run farm pays a democratically run shipping company to transport their produce to a democratically run market for sale, then that would be compatible with socialist ideals. The point of socialism is that there's no bosses to withhold a portion of the value that the workers produce, paying a middle man has nothing to do with it as long as the middleman doesn't have a boss withholding part of the value of their labor.
The people who work in that industry could determine the value of their labor democratically. If Socialist Blizzard voted that all of their employees will earn 10k a year then that's their choice. If Socialist Nintendo voted that all of their employees will earn 100k a year then that's also their choice. No one would be forced to buy their games. You can still let the market decide if customers actually want to pay the price of a product that a group of game developers are asking for under socialism.
On the first point, I'm not sure which countries mandated party membership, rather it is/was sought after as a way to money, power or both.
On the second point, it is only valid if the judicial and policing sector are not properly divided from political power (the US is a pretty dreadful example of this, btw).
Because this outcome is the one happening right now, with basically no end in sight if not for our species extinction.
Social Democracy was tried for decades, it's literally 70 years old. It failed. They were given a fair chance, and the result is now unfettered capitalism.
We need to try something else.
I was thinking more about workers' cooperatives. The big ones (credit unions/coop banking) are consumers' cooperative, so it's the "investors" reaping the benefits (for most amounting to a few dollars a year).
They'd want more stake in their work, but not more stake in the risk. But I'm personally quite risk-averse, so maybe that's just me.
I think I'd be difficult for a true workers' cooperative to get a huge project off the ground, like building a commercial aircraft. It again comes down the the resources needed and the risk involved. But it's still possible.
Again I think most of the big one are consumers' cooperatives.
But anyway, it's great that this models exist. But a lot of coops are masquerading as something they're not. The big credit union here pretty much acts exactly like a bank and a lot of its employees are temp/agency contractors.
Didn't this same exact thread exist a year ago?
People always bring up Tetris, but forget to include the part where he fled the USSR because he wasn't allowed to own his own IP and, thus, not able to earn a real living off of Tetris sales.
People always bring up Tetris, but forget to include the part where he fled the USSR because he wasn't allowed to own his own IP and, thus, not able to earn a real living off of Tetris sales.
User Banned (Permanent): Hostility over multiple posts, many prior bans for trolling, hostility, and inflammatory commentary
Honestly, you can just go fuck yourself right now. Full throttle. Fuck you. Fuck off. Slice it any way you want.
I'm talking about the realities of the future, and mitigating them with socialism is great. I'm a Canadian, and no stranger to strong social democrat policies.
Calling me or comparing me to a fascist because I'm arguing about the total dismissal of capitalism here, and taking pot shots at the communists who complain about everything and have no solutions other than to get shit for free off of people who need to produce. Absolutely fucking stupid take.
There is nothing wrong with socialism and it propping up support infrastructure in our society. Correct and regulate the capitalism with taxes and mitigate poverty. There is everything wrong when radicals start preaching communism, the removal of capitalism entirely, and those who thrive off pointing fingers at people to insinuate they are fascists. Fuck all of that.
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Great then don't just discuss the application under ideal conditions and assume best outcome. Talk about potential failures, missteps and the cost of getting to the ideal outcome. We (assuming you are American) live in a society that cannot be bothered to wear masks for the safety of our fellow citizens. Yet you expect these folks will be willing to radically change their lifestyles for the preservation of our species. Good luck with that.
he should have just accepted his bread line ration like everyone else that wasn't a politician.
Side-effect of socialist systems is the state becomes the one and only ruling class and you only have to concern yourself with one vector point and that's the systems that determine leaders. In a democratic form, it means manipulate votes and term limit laws to ensure you're always a defacto totalitarian state. In dictator form, you're already the dictator in a totalitarian system so doesn't really matter.
there is only one way to keep it relatively pure and that's to purge out the existing leadership violently routinely to ensure no one in leadership ever gets complacent.
Thats not something inherent to socialism though
Some leftists believe in abolishing the state entirely lol
Gaming was born of capitalism. Made profitable by capitalism. U
Our workers have yet to unionize.
Gaming was born of capitalism. Made profitable by capitalism. Undone by capitalism.
Our workers have yet to unionize.
There's no way to have people only use what they need. Otherwise, it'll tend to overconsumption by several with no state to intervene. Communism is as idealistic towards socialism as anarchocapitalism is to libertarians.
Modern "socialist" thinkers are obsessed with the various failures of the 20th century and keep discussing what kind of institutions could foster positive outcome.
Capitalism is already failing. And we all know what happens when capitalism fails. The "natural" outcome is fascism (actual, Umberto Eco Ur-Fascism), as displayed after the great crisis when a large part of Europe fell into fascism (and the only reason US didn't is that Hitler shot first).
You can either revel in how our fascists overlords will "save" our civilization, or try to imagine how society could operate differently, because yes, many e.g. US citizens would be unable to operate in anarchist society, and will fall back to praying to a savior when the shit hits the fan, be he named (it will unlikely be a woman) Trump or Biden.
Ancaps are flawed from thr get-go though. You can't be down with abolishing hierarchical structures and then go lick corporate boot. Ancoms may be very idealistic but at least it's ideologically consistent.
Regardless I wasn't even saying it was feasible, I was more concerned with you linking socialism to authoritarian one party states by default. That's silly.
Haha, yes, I remember reading that from him. Frankly, Elijah Mohammed's plan seemed kind of creepy even, with how people followed him in some instances. We're all partial to capitalism, I guess, it's all many people have ever known. I say many, since in many places, feudalism doesn't seem to have ended, and I speak of my country in this sense. But yeah, all we want is to improve our lives.
Yeah, you might be right, Contra. Fuck me. I don't have the privilege of coming from a well off country like Canada, and live in a country that actively hunts left-leaning people, the country where most environmental activists have been killed this year. I know for a fact, that these posts could legit end up killing me in a couple of years, depending on the government we have over here.
I am also talking about the realities of the future. But when I get angry at a post, I simply get away from the keyboard and take a breath or two, if necessary. If you don't like getting called out for taking cheap pot shots, maybe don't do them. Anyway, enjoy life.
Without free markets, gaming would probably never exist much less thrive. People on this forum are so, so sheltered. Most posters here are low to middle class Americans who have houses so huge and full of crap that they'd even make Western Europe look poor in comparison.
The only valid answer is "It's complicated."
The same answer applies to almost any aspect of modern life viewed in relation to capitalism.
The same answer applies to almost any aspect of modern life viewed in relation to capitalism.
Communism (or socialism) vs. capitalism is a false dichotomy. The vast majority of socialists you talk to in the US (myself included) merely want socialistic policies enacted rather than continued unfettered capitalism. Capitalism and socialist policies can coexist.
Sure, but it also ruins the game in the long run. I, like many others, go back and play our favorite version of previous fighting games like Alpha 2, 3rd Strike, Super Street Fighter IV etc. but that is just not possible with a GaaS game. Those old iterations are lost to time. Imagine if the Street Fighter II series was a GaaS and Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers was the only and final product? Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo wouldn't be available...
What I'm saying is that every "democratic" system that is big enough is going to have to elect a smaller group of people who will make decisions on behalf of everyone. 10 people in a commune can realistically own a washing machine together. But 100 000 railway employees cannot realistically own a railway system with everyone having the same say.
Fair points. I was broadly talking about coops, but I'm not convinced worker's coops specifically can't work on a larger scale. Most of your points are - as you said - from your specific point-of-view and concerned with risk (even though they are evidently more economically stable than their counterparts).
Why not? Any examples where that hasn't worked to base that assumption on?
In my country, if you weren't a communist party member, you couldn't get a decent job, your kids couldn't go to decent high school, much less a college, and you would be bullied by the system in million little ways.
It wasn't mandatory by law, but you were a member if you knew what was good for you. (I know how it worked because both of my parents refused membership).
Sure. The entire Eastern Bloc, where everything ostensibly belonged to the people (and was administrated by committees made of "the people"). And now you - any examples where it worked, except on paper?
No-one who whole heartedly believes the USSR of the 80s was some haven utopia.
Lots of people fled to capitalist countries. Due to a variety of reasons the USSR was not comparable to rich capitalist countries.
1. Strict sanctions from capitalist nations
2. Russia being poorer initially than most European countries at the outset of the 20th century
3. WW1, 2. A revolution and a civil war in one century
4. Major sovereign unrest in the 80s leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall (making things even more uncertain exonomically)
So of course many people left, like Mr. Tetris.
"Ostensibly" and the quotation marks seem to be doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Were they worker coops in anything other than name only?
Nah, I've got nowt. I was asking why it couldn't work, not claiming 100% it could. I'm trying to learn here.
What you are talking about is not markets. You should go read the reasons markets work, when they don't work as free markets (Due to market power, externalities, and so on) and what can be done to solve this. (Hint: it's usually about getting markets closer to emulating a true free market)
Resetera, the place where privileged people from rich countries with developed market economies aggressively lecture and insult people who are living the consequences of communism about its many merits.
I'm not saying it 100% couldn't, but I honestly think it's highly unlikely (at least I can't imagine how it could), and it hasn't in the past.
And also, every time it has been tried, the resulting society was really bad for most of the people living in it, so while I totally get why someone would try, I wish they did it far, far away from me.
Edit: Also if you're asking if they were worker's coops in anything but name, I think the closest thing to actual worker's coops were the agricultural coops after private ownership of land was abolished.
While they kinda worked (probably because there wasn't much money or power to gain from them, so most power-seeking corrupt officials chose other venues to better themselves), most of them were run to the ground sooner or later, or survived with heavy subsidizing from the state.
Yeah, I can understand that. To be fair, unregulated market-dependent capitalism has failed/crashed multiple times and caused untold anguish (even when it's working). It's just got way better press. 😄
I think we're living with a lot of tech advancements that could help things like worker coops work much better. It's a very different world (and also depressingly similar in many ways).
Ah, okay. But we do have agricultural workers coops working now, within a neoliberal capitalist framework... and they do pretty well from the little I've read? Hell, one of France's renewable energy suppliers is a worker coop and they're going from strength to strength, apparently.
And yeah, communism in the past has been far too easily hi-jacked by committed sociopaths, so I'm not suggesting it as an alternative. Political and economic models are not just represented by just capitalism and communism; there are a ton of different ones outside of them (hell, even within those two).
Total market dependence for basic needs is a huge part of the problem, I think.
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Why? 330 million citizens can vote to steer the way of their country, but 100 thousand employees can't vote to steer the way of their company? What's the logic behind that?
In the US, if you're black, you'll have a hard time getting a decent job, you'll have an even harder time going to a decent high-school, much less college, and you'll be bullied by the system in a million little ways, even if by some incredible turn of events you manage to get elected president of the United States.
It's not by law, but if you're white, you'll have much easier time in life (relatively speaking).
I'm sorry, but what you describe is a heavily dysfunctional system (with regard to human rights), and has nothing to do with "communism".
K.
I honestly don't know what to tell you, you obviously think that the only possible way capitalism can be is the way how it is in the US, and you keep explaining to people who lived under communism that they didn't. Excuse me if I don't indulge you any further.
Edit: Also ROFL at the "when 330 million people can vote for a president". Yeah, how's that working out for you right now?
it's pretty right-winged, albeit with explicit rules against discrimination (something which is unfortunately very rare on the internet)
Oh you mean the one area with little to no innovation and almost half the budgets spent on marketing? Thank you capitalism.
Funny, you seem just fine dismissing everyone living under capitalism.
Receipts pls (and I also live under capitalism for the past two decades).
Right. With companies that are too big to fail, driven by shareholders and market value, they often feel they cannot take risks because one big failure could create a catastrophy for the company. Games have to be created primarily as products and to sell as many copies as possible; which will inadvertently stifle creative expression.
Look at Activision. Even when posting record profits, not only do they stick to their typical annual release schedule with almost no deviation, they make sure they give the least amount of benefits and pay possible to the people whom are actually making the games.
Liberal maybe, not leftist.