this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I guess the main issue is with the government having absolute control over the economy. I would not want the most prominent politicians in my country having control of the economy. No matter how much I dislike capitalism.
Just put the people who work for a company in charge of the company. Have them elect who calls the shots. Also have them directly benefit from the company doing well. I guess that is like end-stage unions or smth. All power to the workers. Should be doable within capitalism, maybe, probably.
"All power to the workers" is a communist principle, though. It's the main political slogan of the communist manifest by Marx and Engels.
Yeah, any economic system that concentrates power into one group is bad, whether it's corporate monopolies or a single government (which ends up kind of like the ultimate monopoly in a communist state). Communists IMHO have a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and how incentives can be exploited for the benefit of everyone. We need a form of capitalism that promotes competition (because profit is possibly the most powerful motivator of innovation), but also keeps companies in check with strong regulations, strong workers unions, and profits taxed appropriately. It's also important to recognize that some basic needs should be met by the government like public education, public utilities, correctional systems, national defense, welfare, healthcare, etc. But even with public services, there should be room for private companies to innovate and provide premium alternatives to keep the government in check (with exceptions obviously, we don't want private military and private prisons for example).
I probably could've worded that statement better and you bring up good points when it comes to individuals. Innovation clearly does not require profit motive to occur. The type of innovation you're talking about does require time to achieve, however. For individuals, this is leisure time, for organizations this is billable time. Regardless of the structure of an economy, the creative pursuits you've described can't occur if people are being worked to death.
One thing I will say about open source software, though, is that a lot of projects don't exist because of pure altruism. A lot of projects have been corporate funded (sometimes significantly funded) in order to specifically kill closed source competitors. I'm a pragmatist, though, I see open source software as a universal good for humanity regardless of its raison d'etre. Open source software is a form of competition that pushes closed source software vendors to innovate in order to justify their value. I could also argue that a lot of free content on the Internet is only free in the sense that it was produced by people who didn't have a profit motive and it's still often subscription or ad supported. YouTube, for example, still makes a lot of money on it.
The main point I was driving at is the choice of economic system doesn't matter much for personal creative endeavors as long as it allows people time to pursue them. But market competition for profits is absolutely one of the most powerful motivators for product and service innovation for corporations. So if you adopt an economic system that essentially eliminates competition and profits, you kill that motivation to innovate.