Results 1 to 20 of 76
Eliminating Scarcity for Luxury Items?
This is always something that's confused be, to be honest. I hear communism referred to as a state of "post-scarcity" (i.e. everyone has free access to resources) for items that are made artificially scarce now. This makes sense for a lot of things. But for certain things, I'm having difficulty comprehending how this would actually be possible. For example, lets say you tell everyone in the world they have free access to airline tickets any time they want. Many people love traveling, so many would take up this offer... so many, in fact, that it seems as though there wouldn't even be enough airplanes for everyone who wanted to fly to ride in. A similar issue arises it would seem with items such as hard to find jewelry, that many people tend to find attractive, and other generally hard to produce/procure items. It seems like even under communism there would be at least some things where more people wanted something than the amount of that something that there actually was in the world. So how would this be avoided, and how would items like this actually reach a state of "post-scarcity"?
FKA Chomsssssssky, Skwisgaar, The Employer Destroyer, skybutton
Fuck luxury items. Why would anyone ever actually need a diamond. Why would someone need caviar.
You can never do away with luxury items just like you can never claim that communism is "post-scarcity". A lot of people seem to take this false assumption that communism is automatically and guaranteed to be "post-scarcity" or "superabundant" and proceed to put all their various "theories" on that false basis. Only a handful of products are artificially scarce. The thing these "post-scarcity" individuals seem to forget is that we have FINITE resources and we can never meet the needs of every single individual. You commonly find such nonsense in the case of Anarcho-Communism or the more Utopian Communists.
Once you get that and stop being that Utopian, you will understand that luxury items will necessitate a restriction that not everyone can surpass be it money, extra work, or whatnot. That's why I focus on socialism rather than communism. I suggest you do the same unless you know of any magical ways to create abundance.
We can try to resort to spacemining to fulfill the demands and needs of people, but until that effectively takes place on a large scale then and only then can we speak of post-abundance.
Just remember this:
Since we cannot ensure post-abundance and since Earth has only a finite amount of resources, we need to ration certain types of goods.
Oh and ignore the guy above, he's still stuck in the Anarcho-Punk phase.
Here's kind of the thought process that post scarcity advocates go through
1. Resources in the earth are scarce, so we require a price mechanism to distribute goods.
2. If a price mechanism is not used to distribute goods, and instead, everything is given out free based on need, then that means there is no longer scarcity.
So, as you can see, it's a bit different from what it sounds like.
At least that's what I think. Correct me if I'm wrong
That's ridiculous, although you said you do not advocate it. You do not eliminate scarcity by giving out everything until there's nothing left. The price mechanism exists for a very good reason and that is to ration these finite goods.
And "where" will they get "everything" to give out "free based on need"? Thin air? No, they will need to extract them from somewhere. That somewhere has a finite number of resources that can be extracted. That extraction process can also only extract a finite number of resources per day.
They can't just hand out everything for free based on need and thus claim that they eliminated scarcity as by doing that they will create another scarcity, a more severe and disastrous scarcity, a scarcity of resources. You know the environmental problems we have today? Those would be nothing compared to what these Utopians aspire to achieve.
Think of it this way. You have a shop with a finite amount of goods. There's a scarcity of those goods outside your shop. You open your shop and give out "everything free based on need". You will run out of products in your shop. Replace the shop with Earth. What then? Mass chaos, unemployment, starvation, poverty, wars over what little resources you have left, and even extinction.
Socialism's "From each according to his ability; to each according to his contribution" is much more logical, rational, effective, and "fair".
Alright forget diamonds and caviar (though idk how they'd be eliminated). What about the airplane situation I brought up?
FKA Chomsssssssky, Skwisgaar, The Employer Destroyer, skybutton
Everyone can only fly an "x" amount of miles per year. This amount of miles can be based on the current supply of fuel, trained operating personnel, accepted degree of environmental impact, etc.
As efficiency of airplane production, operational efficiency, and personnel education improves, supply of flights will increase.
Services such as airplane flights operate in a complex material demanding space, and rationing of flights is expected and frankly should be encouraged. As technology improves, and supply improves, scarcity can be reduced.
Airplane flight has only been in existence for around 100 years, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
I think it's "from each according to their ability; to each according to their need" in most English versions. I only point this out because I think in a "post-scarcity" situation (which may not mean full abundance of everything, but at least not having to worry about the basics) there will be less of a sense of needing to account for "fairness". This is different than ensuring that necissary tasks are done and that people arn't just "passing the buck" when they could be playing a helpful community role. Most people today wouldn't really care if their friend came over and got a glass of water from the tap but then dumped it after a sip or two - we would mind if we poured them a glass of champaign or a fancy beer and they dumped it after a sip. So, assuming a basic level of stability and lack of crisis, I think that people probably wouldn't be looking over eachother's shoulders in the food co-op to make sure that everyone there has already put in an amount of work to justify eating dinner. But it also dosn't mean that people will totally overlook someone who contributes absolutely nothing, and moreso someone who doesn't pull their weight in a collective effort.
This also doesn't mean everyone can get what they want whenever they want it and I think especially early on, people will have to figure out fair ways to deal with structural inequalities that remain temporarily from capitalism. This might mean rotating or rationing some scarse things or holding a lottery or something for, say, desired locations for hosuing.
But pretty quickly scarsity could become a thing of the past for food, then housing, education and eventually services like medical facilities and better transportation systems, communities designed for our convinience and health and enjoyment.
For other needs where it might not be immediately or physically possible to allow everyone to have what they want, a society where production is for use and collectivly guided, new methods for fufilling wants could be organized. Maybe better public transportation isn't enough and there are many people who want to be able to dive where they want or travel to remote areas. It may not make sense to produce enough single cars to allow everyone to have one all the time, so instead maybe each community would have a fleet of cars so that it would be possible to reserve one when you needed, but then it isn't just sitting on the side of the road unused aside for a couple hours a day like cars are in modern cities. Maybe luxury beach or mountain homes that are very desireable are turned into vaccation homes also available for people to reserve.
For air travel specifically, I personally think that people would want to invest more in high-speed rail for most travel from region to region, but I think air-travel will still be a big thing. However, we could increase passenger travel by a lot while just maintaining current levels of flights (if we wanted) through the elimination of business and military flights. In addition, the reorganization of production might also reduce the amount that we have to ship commodities since only things that can only be produced in certain regions will HAVE to be shipped, a lot more local production could happen if production wasn't based on finding what's most convinient for capital (low-cost labor, centralized production that only serves the purpose of increasing profits).
Yeh I can recognise that there could be various problems with the inevitable scarcity of some luxury goods. Ultimately the distribution would have to be hammered out through democratic discussion.
But my main argument would be that scarcity is the central, foundational concept of neoclassical economics - and it is this that has to be rejected. Doesn't the idea of "post-scarcity" already concede too much to capitalism? The point is that we need to deconstruct the concept Scarcity and the role it plays in legitimating power within contemporary economic discourse, rather than abolishing "scarcity" (in its absolute, most value-neutral sense) which is an obviously impossible task.
When there is a mass army of unemployed, many millions of tonnes of food thrown away every year while millions starve, sprawling factories just mothballed and left empty, thousands of homeless people sleeping rough outside thousands of empty houses, etc. what is "scarcity"?
Even the Keynesians get this, since they start their economic theorising with trying to understand how governments deal with economic recession and stagnation, rather than starting with some innocent, Robinson Crusoe, state-of-nature period which never existed (and so, by definition, will never be overcome).
for freedom and peace
Good point. In the abstract, isn't capitalism already "post-scarcisty" - isn't that why communism is potentially realizable?
For those of us who live in a capitalist society, the things we believe are desirable and the things we consider to be "luxury goods" will be affected by the capitalist culture we live in. Even post-revolution, this effect will not completely disappear from those who grew up under capitalist-owned advertising-funded mass media.
It would be an interesting sociological study to see what people would want in a generation that grows up without being subjected to consumer advertising in all their media.
See also: http://reddit.com/r/socialism http://www.reddit.com/r/anarchistnews http://reddit.com/r/anarchism
The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
I have to disagree with you.
There are two versions of it with different meanings, one is under Socialism which is "to each according to their contribution" and the other is under Communism "to each according to his need".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_ea...ng_to_his_need
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each...s_contribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_...r_shall_he_eat
You're speaking of the post-scarcity of basic goods and foodstuffs. Post-scarcity does not merely refer to the post-scarcity of basic goods, but a general post-scarcity of goods. In relation to the topic at hand, the OP, and the title, this post-scarcity is not a post-scarcity of food or basic goods but the elimination of scarcity for luxury goods. Nevertheless, the fairness of which I spoke of is concerning contribution and remuneration. It would prove to be extremely inefficient, irrational, illogical, and counter-productive to remunerate every individual the same as every other individual. Wage discrepancies and differing income levels according to contribution rather than need are much preferable and sustainable. You disregard, for some reason, the necessity of "looking over each other's shoulders in the food co-op" to check for an inefficiencies in the labor force, any laziness, and to ensure that people "put in an amount of work to justify dinner". Such actions of personal accountability are necessary, even Kropotkin the Anarcho-Communist himself spoke of the necessity of such actions to address laziness. If we do not take into account contributions and remunerate individuals properly according to their contribution then we create a system where it is rational for individuals to waste, slack off, and yet at the end of the day receive the same or better than others who may have worked twice or more as hard. Overachievement must by every means be rewarded just as underachievement and slacking must be punished. This can be solved through the introduction of a credits system, labor notes, wages (yes), and material bonuses/incentives to make it rational, logical, and rewarding to contribute.
Structural inequalities are not an issue, they will always remain and must never be done away with unless we can somehow magically make every efficient, of the same level of intelligence, beliefs, interests, and dedication. We, of course, do not desire such a system of clones and thus these inequalities must remain to properly deal with the inequal nature of individuals and their relationships. You will need to reward the efficient hard worker and punish the inefficient slacker. The idea of rotating goods is also irrational and counter-productive as it treats all people as inherently equal despite their contributions, work, intelligence, etc. Such a rota-based distribution system would only promote slacking of the part of the hard workers as they are already either way going to get those rationed goods when it's their turn. They have no real incentive to work harder. Rationing scarce goods is the only rational decision. A lottery is as counter-productive as the idea of rota-based distribution. If you have scarce goods or desired locations, you want to use such opportunities to get people to work harder, when they work harder they benefit their entier society, when they benefit their entire society by working hard, they must by every means be rewarded by increased remuneration allowing them to buy the desired location or buy the scarce goods they obtained through their own labor and contribution. The best means of rationing scarce goods and solving the issue of incentives is the remuneration of labor by credits or labor notes according to contribution rather than need.
What about cars? TVs? Diamonds? Electronics? Expensive and naturally scarce goods? How much are you willing to sacrifice the environment to meet people's needs of scarce resources? Food as an issue of scarcity can be solved. The same goes for housing, education, medical facilities, and transportation, but what cannot be solved is the issue of finite resources and scarcity of resources and products. People cannot all have a Lamborghini or Ferrari, their cost of production is too much for sustainability, especially on the large-scale such as the world or multiple "countries".
What if I want to visit my cousin in area X, my friend in area Y, or take my girlfriend? Now get that simple example and multiply it by many millions of individuals desiring to go personal and private places. People need private transport and these people who are going to the same destination need not at all be living together to make public transportation of carpooling effective. People need their own cars, if not their own then their family's.
I don't agree with that decentralized local "reorganization of production". That would essentially be creating duplicates of the same factory in every region whilst forcing factories to underproduce when they can produce at a much higher capacity purely because they cannot ship their goods to where they're needed. You can never and must never do away with international "markets". Peoples' demands today are not what they were during Kropotkin's or Marx's time or even as they were during medieval times. We need electronics produced in Japan with specialized factories, we need microchips from Silicon Valley, we need clothing from X and Y, we need goods from A and B, we need various goods that cannot be produced locally. We are not living off of bread and coal. We cannot produce everything we need locally with the exception of what is impossible to be produced locally. The division of labor is a necessity, this is my disagreement with Marx here, and it must be embraced. Let France produce X, the US will produce Y. Countries/regions can never become fully self-sustainable and if they were to become so then they would entirely eliminate the need for globalization and internationalism. Also I disagree on the question of meeting what's "most convenient for capital", it is necessary to find what's "most convenient for capital" or else we'd risk inefficiencies, waste, extreme expenditure, etc. as some of the criticisms by Mises and Co. explain. We need to find where the cost of production is cheap, we need to find where demand is high and supply is low, we need price signals and feedback, and we need centralized planning or Market Socialism for that.
I believe that the basic needs for living, water, food, housing etc, should be socialised and available to all for free. This is already happening in most welfare states. Items of want on the other hand should be distributed on a consumer market, purchasable with labour credits.
People who grew up in USSR always craved for western products, despite living in a advertising-free society.
It's already happening in most welfare states? Last I recall they weren't just giving away free houses to poor people in Sweden.
FKA Chomsssssssky, Skwisgaar, The Employer Destroyer, skybutton
For most things, no. Aside from absolute scarcity of some resource, assuming that it is possible to realativly easily produce, say a certain medicine, then this can be done simply on a "need" basis. As I said before with the water issue - since no one really worries about tap-water, people don't feel the need to monitor eachother's personal use. Where there's consumer-waste, it's more due to things like lawns in deserts and other things like that, not people pouring too much water or drawing too many baths for themselves. Here in California where there is water rationing, agriculture, not the population is the biggest consumer and waster of water. So re-organizing production, would go a lot further than rationing induvidual consumption. And aside from absolute rarity like with diamonds or whatever, most basic things can be consumed on demand even while waste is reduced through new methods of production and distribution.
It's a bigger question to me of how people will handle the interrum period after a revolution where, say water-systems will still have to be built in some places, hospital services created, new skills taught, etc. At this point it is likely that people will have to have to take more of a count of who's contributing or have to ration or make other compromises based on collective decisions on how to handle some gaps or shortages or lack.
I think there may be a required minimum that communities demand of people as condition of enjoying the benifits of that community; I definately think that even if there was total abundance, co-workers would want to keep eachother in check, but I also think that beyond any "transition" era, that this will be done through custom, that "helping out" would be 2nd nature for people and if someone is slacking, it would be handled through peer-pressure for the most part.
Why do I think this, well for one thing, assuming that socialist relations have become normalized and well-established, then taking part in such a society would need as much instruction as someone getting a job today has. If people want to have their own appartment, they know they have to get employment - there's no real vagabond law enforcing us to belong to a master anymore because capitalism is "common sense" and for induviduals, there really isn't another real way to have an appartment and so on. I think the same would apply in a communist society, people would know that if you want to take part in the community that you are expected to pitch in. The other reason I think this is that before highly developed class societies, this is how people usually lived: hard-work was ensured both through the desire to have an effective use of your labor and time (why half-ass something that's going to benifit you?) and peer-pressure was used to ensure that people pitched in and didn't pass work onto others. I don't think it would run smoothly all the time, I think people might get in arguments and whatnot, some people may be notorious slackers and be disliked because of it, but in a society where production wasn't based on squeezing as much surplus value out of the laborer as possible, this would not cause major problems for overall production.
Aside from peer-pressure like I described above, I think some of what you describe here could apply in a transition era where extra effort or organization of production may be needed in various places.
Woah. Well when I mean structural inequalities I mean like how there are no decent houses in the ghetto or no services in rural areas. I think people would want to eliminate this and while they attempt to do so, there probably would be some temporary shortages or rationing or roation to deal with the gap between the need and the immediate ability to meet it.
Personal differences are not "structural inequalities" in my view. People are different and have their own qualities and things to contribute to those around them... hence, "from each according to their ability". I think people would be more valued since they would all have something to add to a community, even those who currently can't meet the pace of exploitation required by capitalist production.
Why... to extract surplus labor from them? Again, "peer-pressure" I understand and I think it would be natural since if I'm working, I don't really want other people wasting my time and energy by not carrying their end. But, assuming a level of realative abundance (which is possible now) for most things there wouldn't be the pressures as there are now at work: you work until the job is done, rather than: work this fast in this way to do the most for the least wage.
Rewarding "intelligence"?
Where's this pressure to work harder coming from? For what purpose? Subsistance farmers work hard when they have to till the soil, they work hard when they harvest, and then they drink all winter when there's nothing to do. The drive to work harder relentlessly is due to the drive for profits from exploited laber - spreading out work, eliminating structural "slacking" and wastefullness will go much further than monitoring induvidual laborers.
Again, maybe at a time when there are still many lags in production and meeting basic needs and wants, but in a system of production for use, rather than exchange value, this pressure to ensure maximum effort of each worker just doesn't exist in the same way.
If there is an absolute scarcity in something, then I think people would probably want to figure out analogues if it is something with broad demand. Other things can be organized in ways in which less labor results in more use: creating technology that's more flexible and long-lasting, creating communal use of things (if for some reason it's too wasteful for everyone to have their own TV - although I don't think this would be the case - then why not a communal rec-center for every 12 people or few families with a movie screen and digital projector? Why not just two screens for everyone - nice tablet computers and a home big-screen that can also double as a computer monitor. Why do people need 3 game consuls, why do they have to be replaced every 2 years? Why not long-lasting and flexible tech instead?
oops, gotta go - to be continued
I never grew up in the USSR, so I don't know what it was really like there, but I can certainly tell you that China is currently not free of consumerist advertising. Similarly, religion had a revival after the fall of the Soviet Union - does that mean Russians are naturally Russian Orthodox or whatever?
There are always preachers of all kinds - for example, plenty of people in the US "crave a capitalist-free society" despite living in a "communist-free society". There is a difference between an authoritarian system pushing advertising on you (which happens with both authoritarian communism and authoritarian capitalism), and a non-authoritarian system in which advertising is pushed by everyone into the rest of society.
Those brainwashed by Charles Koch may believe only communist nations are authoritarian, but the simple fact is that every corporation is run as an authoritarian entity - and of course, they're the ones that fund advertising - and some corporations rival other nations in power.
See also: http://reddit.com/r/socialism http://www.reddit.com/r/anarchistnews http://reddit.com/r/anarchism
The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
The goal of the socialist economy would be to make these use values as accessible as possible to the average worker by producing as much as possible of it and expanding the means of production. This is all done in order to bring the value down to the equivalent labor put into it. From there, the socialist economy would tend towards simplifying the productive process in order to expand the labor force applicable to such and make the use value take less labor-time to produce individually.
When these steps are taken on a mass scale, over time quantitative changes are made that lead to communism, 'to each according to their need', and at least reasonable abundance.
That doesn't mean all use values have to be produced in abundance to reach communism. I believe there are some that will always be scarce items of use, a reality we will have to deal with as our economy simply can't produce more of it (perhaps yet), we will simply have no choice but to consume less of it, and its distribution would operate according to the 'to each according to their work' principle, as the law of value still applies and we're measuring up commodities/use values against each other. This 'problem' was posed to me by a libertarian here as an inherent fault in socialism, yet, it is a problem of resources, not socialism.
But it is not immediately straightforward determining exactly what basic goods are, what luxury goods are, etc. and where the distinctions lie. Many goods - goods "in general" - are actually derivative of basic goods and their scarcity largely determined by the former.
Distribution according to need is not remunerating everyone to the same degree - by definition, since everyone has different needs.
And it is not clear why it would be so much easier determining what someone's "efforts" were as opposed to determining what their "needs" are. Both concepts are fairly open and debatable. There is no reason why the former principle of distribution would be less bureaucratic and cumbersome to administer than the latter. Unless you just short-circuit the problem by paying by the hour, but we all know how unfair and inaccurate such a measure can be.
So disregarding efficiency, rationality, logic - what is left? Productivity. But productivity is only a value under a regime that is concerned with building a condition of post-scarcity... and you are arguing that this is an impossible goal (taking all goods - basic and luxury - into account). In your position "productivity" is a moral value that remains unanalysed and unscrutinised.
I think there is a strong difference between making sure everyone who signs up for a project pulls their weight to ensure that the project succeeds; and a personal moral belief that hard work should always be well rewarded, that labour in-itself is something praiseworthy, etc., which is never necessarily true and takes the form of ideology when generalised.
I think these are really exaggerated concerns, the result perhaps of you buying too much into neoclassical ideas on individual motivation. Perhaps in rational choice theory these are pressing problems, but not in a communist society based on solidarity.
This might be useful as a supplementary system to deal with things like luxury goods, but is surely unnecessary when it comes to basic goods (and goods in general).
Similar to the above, I don't see these as pressing concerns.
In abstract moral theorising - say, in what has become known as "luck egalitarianism" - it is a pressing dilemma of the age as to whether someone can be said to "deserve" or have a moral claim to their high IQ, and so also to the huge gains in material resources that will supposedly follow directly from this fact. If you are clever you will be rich, and that's that.
But of course this is nonsense. As Steven Lay Gould once put it: how many people of Einstein's talent and intelligence spent their entire working lives in cotton fields and sweatshops, because they had no opportunity to do anything different? And what would it have meant for scientific advance if this had not been the case? (Basically: since when has the talent and intelligence of a person meant anything about how much success a person will achieve, in the complete absence of other social factors?)
The real way to go about increasing productivity is not in trying to motivate the odd individual who is slacking at his post, it is rather to overthrow what currently exists so that we can institute a general economic system and mode of production that allows everyone to maximize their potential.
This may sound glib and dismissive, but seriously - who the fuck actually wants a Lamborghini? Or a set of diamonds? Only a rather greedy and distasteful person I would gues. The problem just seems exaggerated to me.
I don't understand how a local factory producing goods for a local community is being "forced to underproduce"? The objection is only coherent if other communities can't meet their own needs and need assistance from outside.
The idea that a factory should produce large quantities of goods just because it is capable of doing so is an assumption based in a productivist intellectual paradigm that we need to move away from.
I think we need a greater balance between local production and global production/international trade etc. Currently we are very heavily geared toward the latter to the detriment of the former, which barely exists at all in some places. So while I agree that socialist globalisation can be a very good thing, I would disagree that this can be made the sole economic basis of a communist society.
And in many cases of course it is hugely inefficient to have the divisions of labour you mention, especially when it is based on huge corporations trying to find low-wage labour simply to reduce costs.
Not to mention that the colossal amount of energy needed to make current rates of international freight viable is environmentally unsustainable.
Last edited by Lord Hargreaves; 19th May 2013 at 18:14.
for freedom and peace
Actually, in the nordic welfare model people unable to pay for rent get theirs subsidised by the social services.
