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The thing is, the people would still be making a profit under socialism and communism.
The difference is it wouldn’t be at the expense of others, it wouldn’t be to a point they can hoard necessities from others, and it wouldn’t all be funneled to some trust fund rich kid asshole who’s provided nothing of value to this world.
The difference is it wouldn’t be at the expense of others
You live in USSR year 1934, you write an anonymous complaint that your neighbor is a Japanese spy recruited by the British while digging potatoes, your neighbor gets executed and their family sent to Siberia, you get his things (as a gratitude for cooperation with authorities or just cause nobody looks).
You live in USSR year 1934
Not communism or socialism.
Congrats, you’ve been brainwashed.It seemed pretty communist and socialist for people living it. And it was derived from something that is pretty commonly considered communist and socialist.
Anyway, it doesn’t work in your favor to highlight that the biggest examples of, good or bad, practical application of your ideas are actually not that. Means that there are close to no examples.
the biggest examples of, good or bad, practical application of your ideas
All they ever were, were techniques to use ideas that appeal to the masses in order to bait-and-switch them into voting would-become dictators to power, but do carry on with your head in the sand.
Bye :)You haven’t read the relevant things, like Stalin’s short history of RCP(b) where he explains what he thought (by the way, that’s the real starting point in literature of Maoist ideology, Castro regime and so on ; Marx and Engels those people didn’t like, and even Lenin was too wordy), and such.
It’s the other way around, Soviet ideology, Stalin included, till at least 70s was more thoroughly Marxist than anything else really implemented.
It’s just that most of the western leftist groups don’t like how it went, so they pretend USSR was something alien. With the notable exception of communists in France.
Also I don’t think fair pluralism is part of Marxism in any way. It’s similar to modern leftist perception of the USSR.
The difference is [the profit you make under socialism/communism] wouldn’t be at the expense of others
How is that possible? Isn’t “profit” defined as value you get in excess of the value of the thing you traded for? Isn’t profit “at the expense of others” by definition?
Depends how you define “expense”. A good service provided at a fair price, all stakeholders benefit. My CSA share of a farmers produce gives me cheap, quality veggies and gives the farmer consistent cash flow regardless of disease/weather/whatever. We clearly both benefit. Someone else buying UPFs from Walmart because they have literally no other option to affordably feed their family in their neighbourhood… maybe not such a good deal for the consumer.
P.s. Profit is the value in excess of the cost of good sold, not over what the buyer values it as. In a “good” transaction (where the parties are transacting at parity, without monopolistic/exploitative practice) the price is less than the consumer would be willing to pay (the “value” for them) but still enough for the seller to be compensated for the risk and cost they took in buying/making and stocking the product.
I mean if I plant tomatoes, water them, and pick them, I’m profiting from the nutrients in the soil, the sun and the rain, as well as countless other factors.
There’s a lot of ways to make profit without exploiting others or hoarding private property of valuables and infrastructure that is needed by the needy.
You got some good examples in other comments.
My ultimate point is that the average Joe will still work for an income greater than what they had prior to the work. However, it’d be a true meritocracy and they couldn’t accumulate to a point of harming others, like the rich do today.
If I buy a bunch of seeds, plant them, grow a bunch of vegetables, and sell the vegetables for more than the price I paid for everything (seeds, fertilizer, tool wear and tear, and any other expenses related to the garden), I have made a profit. It doesn’t come at the expense of anyone.
It wouldn’t be fair to insist I sell the vegetables at exactly the cost of everything I put into them. I put my own labour into growing them and bringing them to market. If I couldn’t profit by selling them then I wouldn’t sell them, I’d just eat them myself or not even bother growing them at all.
Where do you think the person who paid you got the money, and the person who gave them their money, etc.
Economics is not a closed system where everything cycles around with perfect precision, each person have exactly the amount of money required at a time and paying exactly the right price for exactly the right supply.
This is known as the free gifts of nature.
Another “gift” of nature is its capacity to absorb and remediate the pollution from our industries. Some of us have grown rich by exploiting this capacity, although unlike solar power there is a limit.
Not to contradict you in any way. But just to introduce the concept for the unfamiliar
“Profit” is after labour costs. If you are the one selling the seeds, or managing the operation, you pay yourself for that work before profit.
It’s a funny example, because many of the “farm coops” that actually sell seeds and agriculture supplies are already non-profit structures.
Even debts to creditors supplying capital are before profit. Profit is the surplus that is un-earned, and the direct result of charging more than necessary, or under-paying for supplies, labour, or capital.
Yes, you are right. Profit is surplus by definition. When we are talking about conducting our affairs under socialism, there is no such concept. If a business under socialism were to expand its operations through investment, that’s not profit.
You know the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? Trade creates value because certain items are most valuable to certain people, and getting them where they’re most needed is a valuable service.
Profit can also be achieved without stealing from others via the creation valuable items. A finished product can be more valuable than its individual pieces and the time and skills used to create it.
Socialism and communism isn’t about abolishing production and trade, it’s about collectivising ownership of the means of production and its profit so that just a few people can’t eat up all of the profits.
Fan fiction writers
If I didn’t have to make money to buy food, clothes, and medical care, my email service would be open source. As it is, everything not related to the specific thing I have patented is open source. I’d much rather write code simply to benefit others than to try to make some dosh.
Volunteer firefighters get paid when they’re working, it’s just implies that it is not a full time position. They have normal jobs that they all drop on a dime to rush to a fire scene to stand around and collect.
Not salty about the system or anything
Income/ revenue is not the same as profit, just like a meat patty is not a hamburger.
Socially acceptable to use interchangeably and even a dictionary might call them synonyms but they’re not.
Yes volunteer firefighters are paid for their time when responding to an emergency but no one else is making money off the firefighter or the equipment being deployed. We all pitch in through taxes and get a service in exchange, no one is enriched by it.
In my experience, the fire department sues through the country for “restitution”, so I got to pay twice…
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- People who put their shopping cart back in the corral
(not including the ones who do it to get their £1 coin back)
Christ, what are the coins made out of?
People who put their shopping cart back in the corral
… are not creating jobs for supermarket employees to do it instead.
A vast majority of Foss programmers get paid. Linux would not be where it is at without people getting paid.
Linux foundation doesn’t operate under a profit motive AFAIK. Maintenance of operations doesnt equate the profit motive
What makes you think the majority of Foss Devs are paid for their work?
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You’re confusing two concepts. Even volunteer firefighters get paid, in the OP. But they don’t operate under a profit motive.
The profit motive is seen as integral to the success of capitalism, in economic theory. The idea is that owners of capital will invest in ways that maximize the profit of their capital, and, in so doing, maximize the total value creation from the capital. Hence, the profit motive incentivizes everyone in capitalism to maximize total productivity. Therefore, the profit motive maximizes the gross economic production, and hence utility, of the entire system, even though individual agents are only pursuing selfish maximization of profits.
All of that is true. But it also doesn’t tell the whole story.
In particular, it breaks down in two main points:
- Externalities are not captured by the profit motive. Negative externalities, like pollution, but also positive ones, like companionship and happiness.
- The profit motive is true for total creation of utility, but it completely ignores the distribution of utility. Neoliberal trickle-down free-market economic policy is inimical to equity, despite, on the surface, seeming like an effective policy to maximize total utility generation through the profit motive.
There’s a whole other problem with the profit motive, too: we all have an innate drive toward creative expression and helping others. I suppose you could, cynically, say that these motivations count as “externalities”, but I think that’s a bit reductive. People will want to create things even without profit motive. UBI studies all confirm that people will want to continue “being productive”, even if they don’t need to work.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.
Not in my county, volunteer fire fighters are not paid. There are paid EMTs and paramedics in the county as well as volunteer EMTs. But I would assume most volunteer firefighters are not paid. Some towns also have a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters. (I guess the volunteer firefighters get paid by their employer for the other job they work)
Weird. In Canada, they’re called “volunteer” firefighters, but they get paid for training and for every call they respond to. It’s only like $18/hr or something, but it’s not literally volunteering.
In NZ we get a $300/year “appreciation bonus” or something akin to that. Assuming we attended weekly trainings only and no callouts, it would work out at around $3/hr.
Some of our employers will voluntarily pay for hours we are on callouts when we are otherwise scheduled to work, taking that expense upon themselves, but for most people a callout simply means that we lose wages or need to pull overtime to catch up.
Then FENZ has the gall to try and have volunteer crews act as scabs(at our own cost) while the massively unperaid career staff are striking for livable wages.
i think it’s wrong to say that “without profit motive, no one would be productive”, but it should rather be “without a profit motive, people would be less productive”.
Really doing open source programmers dirty with that insane code formatting
The question is - what are u gonna do about it?
i’m a musician. about half of my gigs i don’t charge anyone and it’s free for attendees. The vast majority of my gigs are free/no cover/no drink minimum.
Post on social media, mostly
Nothing wrong with that. I became organized on a socialist organization mostly thanks to social media propaganda.
I always make all of my source code available, provide the most detailed bug reports, help people for free whenever I can, and use / pay for open source software instead of buying commercial software.
I also try to avoid companies actively causing harm. I don’t buy from Amazon, I switched to an electric car to stop paying oil companies, I installed solar panels and got a wholesale energy provider so I can minimise paying fossil fuel energy providers.
I run a business providing tech support for elderly, disabled, and low income people, and only charge for parts (with no markup).
If you can think of anything else I can do, I am happy to take suggestions.
Where is my payment for lemmy shit
postcommenting? /s“Without a profit motive, we wouldn’t take advantage of people who are productive!”
Just add another motive or gamify it.
#input.[true]Is this real code?
In some language, possibly.
I love saying nothing in combobulated ways.
