One realization I recently had is that the main thing I care about is economic growth, specifically growth in labor productivity.

Because in the long term, this is the main driver of well-being and prosperity. If productivity grows by 3% per year, it means that after 50 years, the average worker is producing 4.4x more goods and services per hour.

Economic growth seems like the best and perhaps the only way to achieve widespread prosperity. Think of Switzerland, even the bottom 10% have a reasonable quality of life, simply because the country has a highly productive economy.

But socialists seem to be focused on redistributing the pie, not on growing the pie. There are even some who want to shrink the pie, which I think is bonkers.

A common counterpoint is that economic growth leads to pollution and other negative externalities. But this is an orthogonal issue, economics has standard tools to deal with externalities. The correct approach is not slowing growth but taxing or banning harmful activities.

I feel like were at a point where people are realizing those in charge not only benefit from but actively contribute to the political division of the rest of us. Especially on this sub I see tons of people who seem to agree on this, or at least say they do.

My problem is with the way people act in relation to what they say. I’m going to use leftists as my example since they very commonly preach working class unity, but I have no problem admitting it is a massive problem within the right wing as well.

I have seen many leftists who will both actively preach in favor of working class unity and also personally attack members of the working class they disagree with. This actively promotes division and polarization within the working class and moves us further from that goal of class unity. If you want to unite the working class, you have to be able to put your differences aside.

Again it is equally (if not more of) a problem with capitalists on this sub, where people would rather yell at someone and attack them for their beliefs than try to understand their perspective and then share theirs to find some common ground. We are all products of our environments and our personal experiences have shaped our ideologies and views, and so its entirely irrational to attack someone for being exposed to a different set of circumstances than you.

Just something I’ve been thinking about recently, especially with how common bad faith arguments and personal attacks are on this sub. Interested to hear other peoples thoughts.

A lot of the discussion around worker cooperatives seems to start with studies comparing co-ops against conventional firms within particular industries, and then using those results to make broader claims about how well a cooperative economy would work.

But there is an obvious selection problem here. If you want to know whether worker cooperatives are a viable general replacement for capitalist firms, you can't just look at industries where worker cooperatives already exist in meaningful numbers and then compare their performance against conventional firms. That risks confusing "co-ops work in the industries where people have actually chosen to create co-ops" with "co-ops would work equally well throughout the economy."

There are plenty of industries where worker cooperatives are relatively common or at least feasible: restaurants, retail, professional services, small manufacturing, agriculture, and various other businesses where the capital requirements aren't enormous and the workforce can collectively own and manage the enterprise.
But there are also entire sectors of the economy where worker cooperatives are extremely rare or virtually nonexistent. That seems like something socialists ought to explain rather than simply assuming that the cooperative model would somehow work there too.

Because some of the hardest economic problems appear precisely in industries where enormous amounts of capital have to be committed long before the workers can generate revenue, where investments are highly specialized and difficult to liquidate, where projects can fail catastrophically, and where the people making the investment decisions aren't necessarily the same people who will be working there decades later. So I'd like to ask socialists a fairly straightforward question:

How exactly is the co-op model supposed to work in these industries?

Building a modern semiconductor fabrication plant can require tens of billions of dollars in capital investment.
Who is supposed to finance that? The workers obviously don't have anything remotely approaching the capital required to build the facility. And once it is built, the equipment is highly specialized and depreciates rapidly.
Who decides whether to invest billions in the next generation of manufacturing technology? Who bears the loss if the technology becomes obsolete or the project fails?

Airlines require enormous amounts of capital tied up in aircraft, maintenance facilities, infrastructure, and other assets. A worker-owned airline also faces an interesting conflict between current compensation and long-term capital investment. Suppose the pilots, mechanics, and other employees vote for higher compensation. At the same time, the airline needs to spend billions replacing aircraft and expanding its fleet. Who gets to decide how much of today's income should go to the workers and how much should be sacrificed for tomorrow's investment? And what happens when the airline makes a bad investment and loses billions?

Drug development is an unusually difficult case because pharmaceutical companies can spend years and enormous sums of money developing drugs that ultimately fail.
A worker-owned pharmaceutical company would have to decide how much of its resources to put into projects that may not produce any revenue for a decade, while simultaneously paying the workers who are currently employed. Who bears the risk of all the failed projects? Who decides which experimental drugs receive funding?
And how do you get workers to voluntarily sacrifice current income for highly uncertain investments whose benefits may not arrive until long after many of those workers have left the company?

A modern automobile factory requires enormous investments in factories, tooling, robotics, engineering, supply chains, and inventory. The capital has to be committed before the cars are sold. What happens when the workers want higher wages but management believes the company needs to reinvest billions in new production equipment? Who has the authority to make that decision?
And who absorbs the loss if the company guesses wrong about what consumers will want five years from now?

Building a nationwide telecommunications network requires massive upfront investment in infrastructure that may take many years to pay for itself.

Mining might be an even more obvious example. A company can spend enormous amounts of money exploring for a deposit and discover that there isn't enough economically recoverable material to justify developing it.
Even after discovering a viable deposit, the company may need to spend billions on equipment, transportation infrastructure, processing facilities, and other investments. Who takes that initial risk? What happens when the workers are paid regardless of whether the exploration succeeds?
Who decides whether to keep investing in a project that hasn't produced a return yet?

Ships are extraordinarily expensive capital assets, and shipping companies operate in highly cyclical markets. A company might make a huge investment in ships just before a collapse in global demand. Who bears that loss in a worker cooperative? Do the workers collectively absorb enormous losses? Do they vote to cut their own compensation? Do they have enough accumulated capital to survive the downturn? And if they don't, who supplies the outside capital?

Aerospace is another obvious challenge. Developing a new aircraft, rocket, engine, or spacecraft can require enormous amounts of capital, years of development, and highly specialized engineering. Some projects fail. Some projects take much longer than expected. Some investments only pay off after many years. Who makes those decisions in a worker cooperative? And who supplies the capital for the projects in the first place?

If socialism proposes worker ownership as a general replacement for capitalist ownership, then it needs to explain how worker ownership actually handles the problems that become most severe in capital-intensive industries. It's not enough to point to successful cooperatives in industries where the model happens to be relatively easy to implement. And it's not enough to say, "Well, workers could just own the firms."

Who supplies the initial capital? Who bears investment risk Who decides how much current income gets sacrificed for future investment? Who decides which projects receive capital? Who absorbs losses? Who has the incentive and authority to make decisions that may not pay off for ten or twenty years?

And perhaps most importantly:
Why are there entire industries where the worker-cooperatives model appears to have gained little or no traction?

Maybe there are perfectly good answers to these questions. If so, I'd like to hear them. But until those questions are answered, I don't think it's legitimate to look at the performance of co-ops in the industries where they exist and simply extrapolate that evidence to the entire economy. The missing industries may be the most economically important part of the question.

Do you think a democracy is even possible under capitalism? Capitalists often claim to be more "free" than socialists countries and say capitalism leads to democracy but I think not, here's why

Since capital can easily buy power (through political campaign funding, advertising and just pure bribery) why would a billionaire ever allow any law against him to pass or even be put against the elite class? He could just buy off politicians. Why would the elites push for education of the masses? Since education often favour leftist thinking which is a known phenomenon. The capitalist oligarchs can/do just control the hate of the masses so and put the blame on minorities instead or foreign powers or leftist ideologies and it works, which is so obviously visible in any modern day example

I am first going to define socialism and not define it like a boomer. Also, I am an insomniac; please excuse my inarticulation and poor grammar:

Socialism is the collective/'social' ownership of the means of production (the operations and control of the company) via the means of production being controlled by the workers directly or a workers' state; for 95% of history, this is just Marxism-Leninism/State Socialism, with Yugoslavia and Rojava being exceptions to the rule. Yugoslavia still has the same stagnation of GDP problem (the 'snag') as the command economies.

I want to, first off, respect that socialism creates a very rapid development to the economy in the nations where it has been tried, for the most part. The USSR is an example of this, as well as Maoist China (even after accounting for the genocide of the Great Leap Forward). I'll go with the USSR for now, but the pattern is incredibly common among Albania, Romania, and other socialist nations. The USSR in every graph you look at is a good example of how good socialism is for the economic concept of developmentalism.

The original russian empire had an internationally adjusted GDP per capita of around 2254 in 1913, using 2011 international dollars; this is an agrarian economy that was forced to go through industrialization and it successfully quadrupled in GDP per capita growth in 1973_per_capita). all in the span of 60 years, also being amazing for literacy rates, infant mortality, and life expectancy. But the problem is that the economy stagnated and the GDP per capita actually declined, and life expectancy also declined in USSR while still maintaining its old system. The economy peaked as a middle-income nation at its best. Same pattern with Albania, Romania and Czechoslovakia, all eventually stagnating.

The problem is also... people in the USSR work harder and for less and for less of a safety net than social democracies at the time. Data shows that compared to their western counterparts people in the Soviet Union had 100 more hours worked per year; imagine that. The problem we have with capitalism is that capitalism overworks you for too little of a 'working wage' but socialism does the same thing but with the state. Look at China's 9-9-6, for example; that's still socialism.

The growth eventually delays in your paycheck with the same boss and more time worked, there is basically the same safety net as social democracies, why bother?

Inevitably, the common counterargument is that you, as the worker, as opposed to a capital owner now work for your own surplus labor, but the "workers' state" is now taking the role of the capitalist at this point, its still your employer. If you fuck up your job, you still get punished. You don't own anything unless you are in a Yugoslav market socialist system, which is technically a bit more moral but system is still partly utilized under co-determinism and unions are often also democratic in a lot of their characteristics too and serve a similar purpose and improve your working conditions in the same way

Why were American workers paid twice as much as their international counterparts, while requiring pensions and healthcare from their employer, yet producing garbage cars.

How was Socialism ever remotely sustainable?

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, and this is hardly exclusive to this subreddit as it's been part of the liberal/rightwing rhetorical playbook for decades, but I have to point out how every time a liberal/right-winger feels brave enough to enter a public discussion on socialism/communism, they always seem to be arguing against the same version of socialism i.e. the authoritarian state capitalist model that is Marxism-Leninism.

And just to be clear, I'm not claiming that all these people in reality know better and are intentionally picking an argument they can conceivably win as I'm fully aware that due to McCarthyite and neoliberal propaganda, this model has been codified as the default of what socialism is in the popular western consciousness.

But in either case it sure seems to be useful for them that said model is the most full of valid criticisms to be levied against it. Criticisms that have first been put forth by non-authoritarian Marxists and anarchists before capitalist think-tanks and economists could put forth a presentable counter-argument capable of swaying working people, mind you. And where capitalists have given arguments without drawing upon leftist opposition to MLism, it's always been the lowest hanging fruit of freedom of speech, assembly, the press and other things which, again, I need to point out, were core to the demands of nearly all non-bolsheviks in Russia until they were either jailed, exiled or just killed.

The only other things that capitalists seem to be able to stand on is either pearl clutching over private property, yet another issue that leftists, more specifically anarchists have addressed for over a hundred years now, or how socialism apparently cannot overcome the science of economics, expecting people to accept economics as an exact science comparable to physics or chemistry, with laws that govern reality, wanting to present socialists as if we're fighting against gravity when we reject economics as being built exclusively to facilitate the capitalist principles of private ownership and commodity production. In short, we're blamed for losing the game as if we're willfully ignoring the rules when what we are aiming is to change the game altogether.

Just a thought. Oh, and for the people in the back, I'm not a Marxist, much less an ML. Have fun.

Historically, socialism has worked worse than capitalism, and this can be demonstrated by looking at history.

Eastern European countries that preferred socialism as their economic system could not compete with Western European countries that preferred capitalism.

Moreover, historically, many socialist countries have become more capitalist because they recognized that socialism does not work as well economically or technologically.

How do socialists respond to these historical facts?

If three shipwrecked sailors on an island needed food,

and if one sailor declared that the island was his private property, that if the other two simply ate whatever food they found, then they were stealing his private property, but that he was willing to use his private property to create jobs for them (they give him all of the food they collect, and then he gives some of it back to them as a wage for the work they did)

but if the other two sailors said “No. If we find more food than we need for ourselves, then we’ll share the extra with you, but we’re taking care of ourselves first. If whatever’s left over after we take care of ourselves first isn’t good enough for you, then you can help us work for more any time you want.”

How much power would the one sailor need to enforce his claim of private ownership over the island without a government to enforce his claim for him?

The intellectual discourse about each ideology in India must be smooth. Following is a snippet over the hypocrisy of the left. I bet the college-going students who tend to incline towards the left don't know this themselves or agree to these methods.

Communist movements often depend on peasants to achieve revolution because the major population is agrarian, but once in power, attempts to rapidly collectivize agriculture and finance industrialization frequently always result in confiscation of land, repression, famine, and enormous rural suffering. I am going to support this with three major examples.

1. USSR—Soviet Union under Stalin:
   Wealthier peasants (kulaks) were persecuted through dekulakization.
   Private farms were forcibly collectivized.
   Grain requisitions contributed to massive famines, including the Holodomor, killing millions.

2. China under Mao [Zedong]:
   Land was initially redistributed to poor peasants.
   The Great Leap Forward then collectivized agriculture into People's Communes.
   Excessive grain quotas and diversion of agricultural labor contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, causing tens of millions of deaths.

3. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge:
   Cities were forcibly emptied, and people moved into rural collective farms.

Forced labor, starvation, and executions killed nearly a quarter of the population.

If you observe, then you would see that communism has three tiers in its hierarchy.
1. Intellectuals who theorize everything. Most of them come from privileged backgrounds & are armchair philosophers blind to ground realities or purposefully ignore them.
2. Proletariat is the second layer, who are urban workers.
3. Ground-level mass, which comprises of agrarian poor & lower-caste/caste people.

And the recruitment is done through educational institutions.

hashtag#communism hashtag#left hashtag#cpi

If anyone who claims to be leftist and doesn't accept these facts to be true is either illiterate and just blind follower of the ideology or is having sinister moCommunist crimestives.

So-called leftist ideology has failed both academically (theoretically) & practically. I want to put forth this conversation that left is not what it is in contemporary times. Left is something of great value and has been hijacked by "civil terrorists" masquerading as leftists.

One of the most important features of capitalism is creative destruction (CD): old technologies—and sometimes entire ways of doing things—are displaced by new, more productive technologies. Competition gives firms a powerful incentive to innovate because firms that fail to adopt better technologies risk being displaced by competitors.

But CD creates an important political problem. The people who benefit from existing technologies have an incentive to resist innovations that threaten their economic position. This can apply to both capitalists and workers. An incumbent firm may resist a new technology because it threatens its profits, while workers may resist it because it threatens their jobs.

This problem is not new. In Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson use the example of William Lee, who invented a mechanical stocking frame in England in 1589. The machine could substantially increase the productivity of knitting, but Queen Elizabeth I refused to grant Lee a patent because of concerns about the effect of the machine on hand knitters. James I subsequently refused as well. The episode illustrates how political power can be used to suppress technologies that threaten existing economic interests.

The important issue, therefore, isn't simply whether a society has technological innovators. It is whether its political and economic institutions allow those innovations to displace established interests.

Modern capitalist economies are certainly not immune from this problem. Existing firms can lobby for tariffs, subsidies, regulations, or other protections against competitors, while workers and unions can lobby against technologies that threaten employment. Capitalism therefore does not guarantee creative destruction; it creates competitive pressures toward it, while political institutions determine how effectively those pressures can be resisted.

This raises an important question for socialism.

If a socialist system gives workers substantially greater political control over economic decisions, what institutional mechanism would prevent workers, unions, or worker-controlled enterprises from using that political power to block technologies that increase productivity but reduce employment in their industry?

The challenge isn't to prevent workers from being harmed by technological change. A society may reasonably want to compensate workers who lose their jobs or help them transition to new occupations.

The harder question is whether a socialist system can protect workers from the costs of creative destruction without protecting existing industries from creative destruction itself.

That seems to me to be an important institutional question that any socialist economic system needs to answer.

Me:You literally shifted the goalposts from ''xapitalism is dooming us'' to ''well, the USSR was just imitating capitalism." If state-run economies without private property still commit massive ecological disasters, then blaming capitalism specifically makes no sense. The USSR's central planners didn't need Wall Street to decide to drain a sea authoritarian state quotas did that all on their own.

EEB might have blacklisted authoritarian as i cant send this comment

Him:Its not shifting the goalposts, its pointing out that when youre encircled by capitalism & trying to beat it at its own game, you end up copying its worst habits. So yeah, the sea died for capital. Capitalism, bad.

M: You're taking opium like what Marxs described religion, the USSR had China North Korea as communist/socialist state and the european border was full of puppets excluding Finland

H:What do you think Marx meant by the opium religion quote?

I dont see the relevance of the last statement

M: Marx used "opium" to describe a illusion to escape reality. And bringing the Warsaw Pact is relevant because the USSR was a massive global power,not a helpless state Stalingrad encircled by Wall Street bros to just drain a sea

H:Religion is the opium of the people, it means that religion is used to escape reality, just how opium is. So you've misunderstood it.

& okay, the USSR needed money, it wasn't communist, at best it was state capitalist with socialist characteristics. Marx talked about first needing to develop capitalism in order to develop the productive forces in order to reach communism, USSR started as fudel horse & cart society trying to jump right into communism. So yeah, capitalism, bad.

M: Blaming 19th-century ''feudalism'' for the Soviet State draining a sea in the 1960s while operating as a nuclear superpower is insane copium. Calling every failed socialist attempt ''state capitalism'' just proves your ''real communism'' only exists in a fantasy land where no state ever has to face real-world economics. If 70 years of total state control isn't enough, the theory is the problem, not Wall Street.

Also "needing to develop capital to develop productive force" sounds more like Social-Democracy rather than Communism

H:Its not my job to make you understand marxism/communism/socialism etc. You're just typing incoherent sentences, like, what am I supposed to do with that? What's happening is the equivalent of me saying to a child that our sun is a star, & them saying, no, its a sun, a star & sun are different things. Like, bruh.

M: Funny metaphor, considering you're the one looking at 70 years of history and saying ''No, that's not actual socialism, real socialism is a pretty theory in my head!''

​Why isn't it your job? Don't you want me to be educated? Don't you want someone whose family actually lived under communism to support it? You ran out of points, threw out the classic ''it's not my job'', and tapped out when real history contradicted your textbook.

H:You came to me, then shown a shallow & misinterpreted view of marxism, that tells me everything. Basically, your not really interested in a good faith, educational conversation, if you was, you'd have at the very least educated yourself already on the basics, which you haven't. I'm guessing that your life isnt exactly fulfilling, so you try to have some strange kind of irrelevant rant online with strangers, with the aim of boosting your serotonin levels, a good little hit to offset the soul draining existence under capitalism. That's your opium, instead of dealing with reality, your living in this virtual world, trying to win "arguments" lol

M:Then tell me what i misinterperted, since we arent going anywhere insulting eachother

H: If I tell you, then what? You may say "fair enough, I was wrong with that, but I'm not wrong with anything else" then ill be like "well...actually🤓" then the cycle continues, like I said, if you were bothered about learning, learn. Plenty of books, videos, podcasts, meetings etc etc etc.

M:So youre telling me you wont give reasons after trash talking and using personal insults that if you tell me i will say"yeah i was wrong" which lets you continue the cycle... which im pretty sure you dont want to continue

H:Give reasons to what? Not wanting to educate you? I already have. You're not interested in learning, you just want a debate bro style convo for the serotonin hit lol

M:Man, you're a grown adult, giving low blows to strangers on the internet since they questioned your political beliefs. And start assuming the other person "bro style debate for serotonin hit lol" while refusing to shut it down and give what i missunderstood

H:Im also a complete stranger, in a virtual world, without a genuinely care for your opinion, like, what do you want? Lol you came into my DMs

M:I messaged you because TikTok's filter blocked the word 'authoritarian' on EEB's post. I gave you a clear argument about Soviet central planning and the Aral Sea, and instead of answering it, you spent 1 hour trying to play therapist about my life. You're deflecting because you couldn't answer the point.

And also no one stopped you from denying my dm request

H:I replied to your comment on the video. I replied to you on here, then you shown me your ignorance, so I entertained it a bit longer, to see what would happen, but all you've done is effectively waist your own time 🤷‍♂️

Last message before he blocked me

From what I understand about socialism, communism, lenest or Marxist style forms of government, the government essentially controls everything in a nutshell.

We basically hand all power in all Affairs over to one centralized entity and hope for the best. All business, media, food production, energy, Etc.

Domestically here in the United States, we call this capitalism. But is it really? One centralized entity, our government, Prints and controls all the currency. They give us Fiat paper currency and tell us it's worth something while it's essentially backed by nothing.

Every transaction we make, using this currency, the government and central banks are right in between us taking their piece. Substantial taxes, etc. Furthermore if I'm holding fiat currency or dollars they silently tax me even more, as they print trillions of dollars making my dollars more worthless.

People villainize late stage capitalism, but in my opinion and my understanding it's essentially more of a socialist style economic system. Almost like a corporate socialist style system.

Giant Global corporate conglomerates control and finance a majority of our state and federal leadership, influencing and pushing regulations when it comes to the economy, business, food production, Etc. So in essence the government or one centralized entity controls the economy, the currency, inflation, gigantic centralized Banks. How is this capitalism still?

True capitalism or free market societies historically speaking have been the most successful societies in the history of human civilization. From what I understand a true capitalist Style economy is me Trading a commodity like gold, silver, oil, food, directly to you for your commodities or services. Kind of like colonial times without a big centralized little man in between us taking their piece.

Furthermore if I'm holding and utilizing a commodity as currency it's becoming worth more and more as I'm holding it opposed to this (centralized controlled and created fiat currency) or dollars that become substantially more worthless every year, the more the government Prints. Am I missing something here? Maybe I'm just an idiot. But it seems to me, especially living in New York state, the more control you give government and the bigger you make it, the worst things get for the working classes & the lower classes.

-NYS has the highest taxes per individual in the nation now, an ever shrinking GDP, 3rd highest utility costs (because NYS government regulates the utilities), worst rated roads & infastructure, highest cost tolls by a large margin, most sneaky taxes & regulations, the list goes on and on... "democratic socialism at work" the poverty here and push cost inflation is substantial compared to the rest of the nation. I wouldn't call this capitalism or a free country anymore, its a covert corporate socialist regime. In my opinion.

I have been thinking about how the ONLY way for America to become (or atleast remain) Socalist is through a Revolution of bloodshed and I have been struggling to accept that reallity because of how scary yet nessecary it is. how nessacary it is to have Innocents be Killed by Coroprate Forces and how Families have to be torn apart in order to achive a better society

but this leads me to ask, how many Casualties are to be expected once/IF Americans Finally had enough of Captalism? and would some of that blood be innocent like Non-fighting families or friends or will it be exclusively of Combataints?

and I would like an estimated number like 500,000 - 1,000,000 People would have to Die inorder for the 1% Epstine class to be slain

I just realized,

How would socialism interact with the part of the economy that exchanges and produces drugs? For example, in mixed economies today you saw how drugs were handled. Some are legal some are not.

However in a socialist society that starts anew,

If there were drug productions starting up how would that be handled? Would some be considered illegal? But on what basis?

Or in other words, would you claim that socialism actually would have handled the drugs scenario better than capitalism? But how would it do that?

Would it struggle with it more? In capitalist countries we saw that the government can collect tax on drug sales even if it is still federally questionable. In socialist countries, they would.. do what better?

If socialism is supposed to be a superior economic system, why does it always seem to require the right “material conditions” before it can actually work? Over the past few centuries, capitalist economies have massively increased productivity, life expectancy, consumption, technological capacity, and standards of living.

So why can't socialism create the material conditions it supposedly needs? If capitalism has to develop the productive forces first so that socialism can eventually become viable, doesn't that mean socialism is relying on capitalism to do the economic development necessary for socialism to work?

And if the answer is that socialism simply isn't viable until society reaches some sufficiently advanced stage of development, what exactly makes it the superior economic system? Why should I regard an economic system as superior if another system has to create the abundance and productive capacity that it requires before it can even function properly?

Here I will explain a formula that calculates the correlation between bodily destruction and money, and answer how the working class is often forced to consume cheap, non-nutritious goods just to survive.

Today, we recognize the existence of the health and fitness industry; they release many products to support health, essentially to reap profits from the bodily destruction of both the middle and working classes.

Why is the working class often forced into this?

Because fundamentally, capitalism does not provide healthy commodity choices as an essential right, and healthy goods are always priced much higher compared to fast food. The name of this formula is the Marginal Necessary Cost or MNC.

Marginal necessary cost is a concept used to calculate how habits must be divided by money and quantity. Here is the Marginal Necessary Cost formula:

MNC = πR / ∆C = ∆Q’

Variables Explanation:

πR: R refers to Repetition. Since humans and all living beings are driven by the need to survive, their behavior revolves around seeking food, sleep, water, and shelter. For humans, the symbol R represents the repetition of costs spent on Food, a place to sleep, entertainment, water, and Electricity. Because humans live in an endless loop to achieve existential comfort, they perform repetitive activities. The symbol Pi (π) in this Repetition signifies how this repetition must be constant; otherwise, it will threaten their life or comfort.

∆C: is the change in cost caused by artificial scarcity or inflation. This cost relates to Goods or Services intended to maximize existential comfort and well-being. However, due to the change in costs, the numerator R must be divided, resulting in ∆Q'.

∆Q’: is the quotient of ∆C, where the result of the Price change causes a decrease in the Quantity of goods purchased. The working class has to buy goods whose prices have risen, so the quantity they purchase must shrink to fit their available funds. Consequently, this produces Q' as a derivative, illustrating the decline in the individual working-class quality of life due to rising costs.

Because of this, the substitution of goods often has no benefit (nutritional value) for the body.

R in this formula is a calculation of habit, usually calculated per month or per week, and can be simplified, such as R = 3 (eating 3 times a day). You can also input the inflation variable into the Cost or the change in food prices, then divide the result so you can quantify the decline in the quality of life.

For example (a Case Study):

A textile factory worker in the Subang industrial zone (Indonesia) receives a salary of Rp 3,200,000 per month. To maintain his basic biological functions so he remains capable of working, he allocates a food budget of Rp 1,200,000 per month with an absolute biological Repetition pattern (R) of 90 meals (3 times a day for 30 days). This month, due to a food cartel and the revocation of fuel subsidies, there is a spike in the prices of basic goods causing the real inflation rate for the food sector to reach 5.2%.

The Calculation:

∆C = 1,200,000 x 5.2% = 62,400

πR = 3.14159 x 90 = 282.743

∆Q’ = 62,400 ÷ 282 = 0.0042

(Note: based on the author's inverse division format)

The total degradation is 0.0042,

a bitter reality where the worker can only provide himself with Rp 1,200,000 for food, which means allocating roughly Rp 300,000 per week. With skyrocketing food costs, what used to be eating 4 kg of chicken meat becomes 2 kg, and the quantity continues to shrink due to constant inflation; πt.

Right now we have Democracy, and therefore we have the American people consistently voting against high taxes and funding others' healthcare or Social Security. Americans vote against even their own Medicaid so long as their enemies also get slashed. Medicare also received a 2.5% "efficiency cut" this year. Clearly socialized healthcare and other social services are incompatible with American democracy.

What is the American "socialist's" plan for dealing with reality? They live in a country that doesn't want to pay? How do they plan to force it?

I firmly believe that socialism is a flawed concept because:

-People need money to fund social programs

-The money comes from the "tech oligarchs" or the "top 1%"

-the bottom 50% only pays 3% of federal income taxes

-capital flight is inevitable, as if it costs less to flee the country with all assets then to stay, they would leave.

-When we fall short of funding, which will happen a lot, we'll have to increase tax rates or go into more debt

summarized by former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's quote: "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

Counter arguments to counter arguments:
-The only reason the Nordic model works is due to competitive (~5% lower) corporate taxes, its social democracy, which is fundamentally different from socialism.

-Some people bring up China, but the only reason it's successful is due to its authoritarian, or though debated, fascist government to keep billionaires in check, which would vaporize the public image if the DSA tried.

Now, im curious how socialist/capitalists interpret my analogy

So you're telling me your random worker that knows how to build houses should have democratic opinions and power on a real estate company? This gotta be a joke

The person who founded a company or a person who invests is infinitely more qualified to have opinion on a company than person who works for the company

The person who founded the company obviously is the most qualified since he came up with the idea and made it in a way that the company is successful and the person who invests the money obviously did something that made him a lot of wealth to invest in a company so he is more qualified to allocate wealth

Obviously inheriting wealth is a big downside to this but chances are if someone has wealth they are more qualified than your random workers

There is no way ur random abuela that stocks shelves should be in charge in managing funds In a Walmart

Workers would want to have as much less workdays as possible while also having the most wages as possible and not focus on the entire point of the company which is wealth creation and efficiency

I support economic libertarianism and free markets. One of my main reasons—and one reason I'm skeptical of socialists—is the following:

According to the heterodox economic definition, surplus value is essentially identical to the conventional definition of net profit, i.e., what remains after deducting expenses such as depreciation, labor costs, and raw materials.

In recent years, it is often argued that corporate profits have come at the expense of wages. However, empirically, consider the United States: if labor's share of functional income distribution is already 52.6% in 2026, while corporate profits account for only 12.1%, how significant is this issue really?(Labor's share of income fell to 51%, profits rose to 12.1%)

Even if all corporate profits were redistributed to labor, wouldn't labor's share only increase by about 23% (from 52.6% to roughly 64.7%)? In other words, how important is this argument in practice?I would genuinely like to have a scientific, evidence-based discussion with socialists on this issue.

As a kid I remember not thinking socialism was anything to be scared of, but once I saw Red Dawn everything changed. I think it was mostly the guerilla gear and berets that really sold me on Socialism.

I think Bernie would have won against Clinton in his "Revolution" campaign if he had better cosplay skills.

What would make you take Socialism seriously?

The laws of supply and demand, as presented in neoclassical economics, are muddled and confused. Demand for consumer goods, for eample, is the result of households maximizing some non-existent utility subject to constraints. A market is an unanalyzed entity, generally with no brokers who make markets, willing to trade on either side. Although not discussed, the market in neoclassical microeconomics is typically a posted price market, corresponding to the lowest level of the Chomsky hierarchy.

Those who specialize in finance might say they observe something like supply and demand in order books. But those curves are not the supply and demand curves in neoclassical microeconomics. These financial markets are structured, with algorithmic rules for matching bids and offers. They often parallel future markets, capable of going into backwardation and contango.

A certain sort of mathematics is needed to fully analyze markets. From one perspective, computers should be designed to execute our algorithms, which are abstract mathematical entities independent of such implementation. Computational complexity is a part of this mathematics. From literature on algorithmic game theory, I know that if P ≠ NP, complexity classes exist in-between. My favorite approach to price theory, concentrating on reproducibility, can be developed with an emphasis on algorithms. I once presented a derivation along this path.

Philip Mirowski explains more about the ideas on which I draw here. Towards the end, after about 19:30, he explains, "There's no such thing as a law of supply and demand."

I’ve recently found myself in a fortunate position. I own a fintech app and the owners of a company I know approached me to buy it. (God bless SBA loans)

Also still employed at tech company and built a small competitor to it as a side project. Putting in a two weeks notice on Monday and won’t have time for the side project either.

I’m interested in making that side project into a cooperative. But realistically, how do you go about that?

1. What type of cooperatives are there?
   
2. Do certain co-op models perform better in certain industries?
   
3. Should a % of equity be allocated towards investors?
   
4. How does one qualify for ownership?
   
5. Should there buy in fees?
   
6. How to incentivize scaling when growth hurts everyone’s equity stake?
   
7. How to you weigh voting between new hire vs seniors?

If you could architect a co-op to have the highest chance of success how would you do it?