[chr1]

Capitalism is also an extension of democracy, the difference is that with capitalism you get to choose how to vote, by giving part of your vote to someone who have created a better product, and get someone elses vote by doing something useful. With socialism you get the same amount of votes whether you do something useful or not, and can spend that vote on the only type of product whether you like it or not.

This is actually rather similar to the form of democracy we have in our governing system, where you get to choose between two bundles of policies you do not like, and i'd say we need to make our governing democracy more similar to our economic democracy instead!

[coldtea]

>Capitalism is also an extension of democracy

An extension where the more money you have, the more influence you get.

Unless it's 1 person, 1 vote, it's not democracy.

[chr1]

> Unless it's 1 person, 1 vote, it's not democracy

Let's say every person has one vote And there are thousands and thousands of elections going on every day. Most of the people are not interested in most of elections, so they ignore elections because it is not possible to follow everything. Which means we end up with 1 person 0 votes most of the time. Now to improve the situation we can agree to collaborate i'll vote the way you want for the issue you care and you'll help me in return. Money is simply a way to make this kind of collaboration easier. Saying that any kind of cooperation should be banned doesn't help anyone, and leads to a stalemate in the case when there are many issues to vote on. In fact if our governments were real democracies where votes could decide real policies instead of picking someone who is going to lie for the next 4 years, we would have a system very similar to money to help us to deal with the large amount of issues to vote on.

[tsimionescu]

Buying is an extremely indirect form of voting. What socialism means is that workers inside a corporation would democratically decide how to run that corporation, instead of being handed down directions from an absolute ruler (the CEO/Board of directors).

[chr1]

That's only the first half of what socialism means, the second half is that if they make poor choices, and their corporation goes bankrupt, the other corporation has to employ them and give the same amount of voting power, as to the old workers who had made better choices, and kept their corporation working.

The first half is pretty much uncontroversial, and would work under capitalism too. The problematic part is the second half which resets the board, giving the same voting power to qualified and unqualified worker, and removing the incentive to work well.

[tsimionescu]

To my understanding, the only obligation would be that, IF you "employed" someone, they should have the same voting power as everyone else, since they should always be empowered to have some say on their own work. But I don't know of any socialist principle that would force any particular company to "employ"/associate with any particular person.

[chr1]

Interesting, i have never seen this definition of socialism where it is simply about the way companies are governed and companies themselves are free to compete with each other. I expected a system that would try to equalise everyone in the whole country instead of simply everyone working for a given company, so it would need some way to redistribute goods instead of simply giving equal voting rights to all employees.

Would the system you describe be the same as capitalism, with the exception that workers are prohibited from selling their voting rights to anyone else?

[tsimionescu]

The oldest idea of socialism is 'worker control of the means of production', which sounds a bit antiquated, but refers exactly to this: that the people doing the work should get to decide what work is being done.

There is one major difference from capitalism though, that would have broad repercussions: workers do not get paid a wage, they directly get the profits of the company (not in equal amounts, but by some democratically voted scheme specific to each company). This would lead to vastly more equality in society. It world probably also have a huge impact on international economic relations.

There are many forms of socialism, but what in describing is one of the oldest, and it is the one preferred by Noam Chomsky, the most influential leftist thinker in the world.

[Nasrudith]

That brings to mind literal antiquity with Roman soldiers beinf required to supply their own gear. It was decentralizing in power but to call it equality is a bit misleading given it effectively created a caste barrier to be a soldier by an added constraint of "fit enough to fight AND afford the kit". The alternative was government supplied gear.

Of course the downside of the alternative was that it allowed for a centralizing of power in generals. Proto-generalismo problems ensue.

Which I believe highlights the irony of "equality" and "accessibility" being in opposition. Effectively the fetishized "means of production tied to labor" means by implication everyone is required to own all of their capital for production. Otherwise they cannot start. There are more barriers to entry and the lowest are even more disenfranchised. That is before the organizational logistical problems of supply chains and industrialization let alone what comes after it. It brings to mind the old form letter joke about "your proposed solution for spam won't work".

I don't oppose trying to find a better system, and laud attempts but that doesn't seem workable.

[chr1]

Which types of contracts between people would we have to ban to achieve this version of socialism? If someone was allowed to form a company by himself, and sell his work to another company, or to forgo his vote in exchange for a fixed pay, we'd be back to the current state.