Havet's ironclad critique of restriction policy and Dean's politics

[Havet]

To be fair, I should be issuing you an automatic infraction. I'm not going to because I'm considering this a "grace period" where people who are used to unfair restrictions threads being full of all this kind of toss. Riddle me this, though, when you read this post:
Did you think that AugustWest had written it for his health?

Right. That's it, next offtopic post, no matter how inocous seeming (even a response to the rhetorical question above) will be immediatly infracted. Any whining will not be tolerated.

I asked Dean that because he too also supports centralized, unequal power structures, as seen in this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1832706&postcount=4).

[Dean]

I asked Dean that because he too also supports centralized, unequal power structures, as seen in this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1832706&postcount=4).

How on earth do you consider anything in that post endorsement of centralized power structures? I reread the whole thing and I see nothing to that effect.


Can someone please split this back-and-forth between Havet and me? Give the new thread a funny title plz.

[Jazzratt]

Hope this title works. I suppose it could have been "Havet shits away the small amount of leniency he was granted in order to make yet another boring criticism of real leftism whilst illustrating that he is either too illiterate or too arrogant to understand the warnings put in place by the admins." but that would have exceeded the character limit.

[Ele'ill]

This is a pretty good analogy for this thread- now and into the future. In regards to which side of the discussion- I'm a Philadelphia Flyers fan.



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[IcarusAngel]

Dean has made some of the most informative posts in recent months. He's obviously been studying a lot of economics and politics. I often stop by just to read his posts.

I don't see how there's anything "anti-socialist" in that post Havet linked to and in fact seems to be a standard criticism of the old USSR. Also, almost all socialist theories have outlined something similar to workers' controlling the means of production approximates socialism perhaps with a centralized authority to monitor activity. Guild socialism for example has purposed a type of "government" over the guilds that would help resolve disputes and so on coupled with a "balance of power."

I also find this thread ironic given that Havet has defended every single corporate bureaucracy from Toyota to Honda to Federal Express to Microsoft as better than state-democratic alternative even though they're even less susceptible to public influence, and defending them with claims not even the CEOs of these companies would make for fear of being accused of tomfoolery.

The problem here is that if you have a company producing widget x, and an engineer decides that making widget y would be better, you have to go through a whole bureaucracy before you can convince them to market widget y and the thing they are most concerned about is their profits. So if widget y was better designed, they make not use it if it cuts into their profits. This trite example actually happened in the case of the automobile companies and engineers were going nuts trying to inform the public that they were designing junk. It has happened in software etc.

In fact in South Korea, Taiwan has laws on the books against whistle-blowing and if you read the newspaper several people have recently been prosecuted under these laws for exposing corporate corruption, bureaucracy, and so and so forth as they see it as a dishonor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0618/South-Korean-whistleblower-Kim-Yong-chul-breaks-silence-on-Samsung

In a free-market, a corporation could just force you into a non-disclosure agreement so as to exacerbate the problem.


I'm really sick of all these attacks. If Olaf and Havet would move beyond their Mises/Wiki studies and study some real economics or at least get familiar with socialism/communism/anarchist debates they wouldn't be so fucking boring.

[Dean]

This will do well.

[Skooma Addict]

The problem here is that if you have a company producing widget x, and an engineer decides that making widget y would be better, you have to go through a whole bureaucracy before you can convince them to market widget y and the thing they are most concerned about is their profits. So if widget y was better designed, they make not use it if it cuts into their profits.


What on earth? The price system coordinates production since it conveys tacit and idiosyncratic knowledge to market actors. An engineer cannot just "decide" that making widget Y "would be better." So if you oppose private property and the price system which it allows for, then what do you propose replace it which could serve the same functions?


I'm really sick of all these attacks. If Olaf and Havet would move beyond their Mises/Wiki studies and study some real economics or at least get familiar with socialism/communism/anarchist debates they wouldn't be so fucking boring.

Classic Icarus.

[RGacky3]

What on earth? The price system coordinates production since it conveys tacit and idiosyncratic knowledge to market actors. An engineer cannot just "decide" that making widget Y "would be better."

This is all theory unrelated to reality. In reality when you get centralization of wealth and power, the coordination of productoin becomes more and more centralized in a few, and an engineer, who is someone who THINKS that widget Y would be would work better, and probably make more profit would have to go through the beaucracy to get the go-ahead from the ones that control production.

I'm using YOUR argument, you and havet have told me over and over again, about risk, how you don't know if something will make profit until you try it, the market does'nt choose whats produced, the market chooses what continues to be produced, people like engineers decide what enters the market.

This is another example of market mysticism, the idealism that the market is some sort of invisible force seperate from people with money and thus power.

[Dean]

What on earth? The price system coordinates production since it conveys tacit and idiosyncratic knowledge to market actors.
...in proportion to the particular assets controlled by said actors.


An engineer cannot just "decide" that making widget Y "would be better."
That's right. Its too tied up into market forces for engineers to have such controlling stake in particular decision-making processes - even when said controlling stake might post no risk, but to engender efficiency or other technical values in the given product or service.


So if you oppose private property and the price system which it allows for, then what do you propose replace it which could serve the same functions?
The price system or private property? Well, a lot of people promote decentralized, committee based organizational structure as a replacement for the corporate / partnership / state models. I think something along those lines could work very well. I doubt resource allocation and commodity values would suffer any more than they have under the global neoliberal platform we experience today - in fact, I think these proposals would be very beneficial in terms of those particular questions.

[Ele'ill]

So where is Havet in Havet's thread?

Havet- you're not a bad poster- where are you?

[RGacky3]

When it comes to the Market supporters he's one of the smartest here. So, yeah, I hope he stays.

[Havet]

I'm just going to post this, and then i'm not going to post anymore here. One thing is to receive an infraction. Another is to have a thread made, in my name, without my permission.

The support of centralized unequal structures by Dean is most clear in the OP. He supports nations where the scaling back of social benefits is happening (thus breeding inequality), and where religious intolerance is being forced (thus breeding centralization). The fact that he supports this as a result of democratic action is only a detail.

If purely direct democratic action breeds the complete opposite of what most communists defend, then I do not know what you could possibly tell yourself in order to continue tricking your mind, by pure faith, that the method which you wish to implement won't result in complete opposite results that you desire.

However, I do not think that pure direct democracy breeds this. Nor do I think that in Greece, Iran and France are the most democratic nations. Seriously Dean, what have you been smoking?

I don't know what source to quote since people here always find a way to invalidate it, basing themselves on ideologies rather than facts, so I'll leave you with a movie made in Iran:

No One Knows About Persian Cats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Knows_About_Persian_Cats)

Even if iran, greece and france are more democratic than the U.S.A, why would you want to support them? It matters a hell of a lot more that oppression is happening rather than the fact that it may be happening because of democratic action. I thought communists were against all oppression, regardless of the way it manifested itself.

Yet here we have a moderator which actually supports oppression, so long as its done democratically. Give me a break.

[Dean]

I'm just going to post this, and then i'm not going to post anymore here. One thing is to receive an infraction. Another is to have a thread made, in my name, without my permission.

The support of centralized unequal structures by Dean is most clear in the OP. He supports nations where the scaling back of social benefits is happening (thus breeding inequality), and where religious intolerance is being forced (thus breeding centralization). The fact that he supports this as a result of democratic action is only a detail.

If purely direct democratic action breeds the complete opposite of what most communists defend, then I do not know what you could possibly tell yourself in order to continue tricking your mind, by pure faith, that the method which you wish to implement won't result in complete opposite results that you desire.

However, I do not think that pure direct democracy breeds this. Nor do I think that in Greece, Iran and France are the most democratic nations. Seriously Dean, what have you been smoking?

I don't know what source to quote since people here always find a way to invalidate it, basing themselves on ideologies rather than facts, so I'll leave you with a movie made in Iran:

No One Knows About Persian Cats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Knows_About_Persian_Cats)

Even if iran, greece and france are more democratic than the U.S.A, why would you want to support them? It matters a hell of a lot more that oppression is happening rather than the fact that it may be happening because of democratic action. I thought communists were against all oppression, regardless of the way it manifested itself.

Yet here we have a moderator which actually supports oppression, so long as its done democratically. Give me a break.
Wow. I never said I supported those nations or their policies. I merely accept the fact that they have more democratic characteristics. I much prefer some of the social economic policies of Canada and Sweden, for instance, but I accept the relative dearth of democracy.

How pitiful that you are conflating acceptance of democratic tendencies with a black-white characterization of support: I either have to fully back or fully reject those regimes. Give me a break.

If I was discussing prisoner's rights, I might as well be considered a Zionist since I admire some of the permissive and positive traits that the Israeli penal system has for its citizens (probably not Arab citizens, though, but I'm not sure on that one).

But anyone who has read my posts knows that it is absurd to characterize me as in general supporting Israel, Iran, Greece or France. You should know better.

But then, I should have expected this dogmatic, unfounded attempt to cast aspersions on my character. You're so obsessed with frivolous moral concerns that you fail to have any real relationship with the mores of power extant today - power structures which, if you cared to study them, would explain a lot more than the "us and them mentality" you are proposing here.

[Dean]

Also, I think this tread is definitely worth following up on, Havet. Your argument was incredibly absurd and I think you should address that fact.

[Dean]

Since he won't post here for some odd reason, I'll x-post my response to him:

Havet,
The world is not black and white. Just because I prefer democracy doesn't mean that I support the policies - or even necessarily the populist positions - in the most democratic states today.

I'm very disappointed in you, because you've laid the framework for your attack on one of the most rudimentary logical fallacies: guilt by association.

If you reread my post, I don't think you'll find any valuation for the racist policies of the given regimes.
-Dean

[Ele'ill]

I believe it was Havet that did this before- in Reactionary Chatter and when I created a thread to discuss the issue there was a brief exchange and then the user posted a comment in chatter about never posting again.