Life After Oligarchy

https://www.commonweal.scot/articles/magazine-zrell

by robtherobber • 24 days ago

3 2 24 days ago

anonli• 24 days ago

Great read. The core premise hits hard: modern capitalism isn't about rewarding production anymore - its about rent-seeking middlemen (Amazon, giant supermarkets, Uber...) extracting wealth by acting as gatekeepers.

halperter• 24 days ago

I think the sentiment here isn't very bad. I do agree that the status quo has issues and corporations extract value from undervaluing the labor of the proletariat. However, the article's solution to the capitalist system's woes is to essentially monopolize distribution under the state. We replace private capitalism with state capitalism. This doesn't really solve for the staus quo.

First, they have something about how corporations in distribution soley act as uneeded middlemen. I can see the angle but I think that if consumers didn't need the middlemen how come the exist in the first place? There must be some sort of demand.

Second, repsonding to solvency, monopolies in _any_ entity is dangerous because they lead to profit gouging and corruption because greed is far more powerful than virtue. Ex: Uzbek cotton scandal [1]. But let's say that the goverment happens to be virtuous, which they have an _incredible_ track record of.

Then, the next step is to... tax the producer to fund the govt? This stifles free competition by lowering possible profit margins and creating an enviroment where bulk products still reign supreme, so the status quo doesn't really shift.

And do you know how we're going to take the spot as the distributor? We're going to...

tell Amazon they have to unionise and...take their premises.

I see no possible way that this rushed takeover of an international corporation could go well. If anything, the status quo shifts negatively---workers get laid off by amazon and have to get rehired by the govt, which adds overhead to the nation's supply chains which most likely is detrimental to overall wellbeing.

So let's assume that all of the above consequences don't happen and state capitalism is achieved. What now? We are just shifting inequality from outside our nation to internationally. Who do you think will be exploited in this brave new world of ours? Not us, but someone else. Capitalism necessitates the undervaluement of labor for profit. Our capitialist machine can't stop, so others will inevitably become oppressed. Hey, at least it's not "us" ;)

The final part of the proposal is essentially a buy now pay 20 years later for everything you have. 800 dollar washing machine? Now that's just 40 dollars a year! This reminds me of those buy now, pay later kinds of deals where you are lured in by a cheap sticker price, over consume, and are then crushed for the next few years. I don't think that this is a great policy.

They have this whole section about open source, which I think is a pretty good idea and also think is urealistic.

Then to really screw over the rich we steal intellectual property and make cheap clones of everything magically! Alienate the US! Go and work with India and China who totally aren't also problematic and have oligrarchs! Scotland prosperity! UBI! Yay!

You can imagine it quite easily The issue is that it's just one set of unlikely circumstances and bad consequences piled one on top of another. This is nigh impossible to make happen.

I think this whole "screw oligarchs" thing and replacing oligarchs with state capitalism is masking the fact that capitalism and greed is the root of the evil, not the wealth disparity. In no world does greed provide a solution to inequality (see the wealth disparity between nations in the Global South and the nations that exploit them).

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_cotton_scandal]

Life After Oligarchy

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