Socialism Vs. Capitalism

Woon Deadn wrote: I am just talking about what was going on in the Soviet Union. In two words, life was mostly unpredictable, weird, ascetic - but that does not necessarily mean catastrophic.

as opposed to here.  hah. Capitalism life is most unpredictable, weird and ascetic - but that does not necessarily mean it is not going to be catastrophic. 

Our system may just prove to take longer to fail than yours did...  but it could for the same reasons..  human failings and abuse of the system... and if it does.. it will likely fall twice as hard and this time with catastrophic consequences.

Finnforest wrote: You say minorities step in to take those jobs...I don't doubt that, they're good jobs, but my question is, why are young guys rejecting those jobs?  In my opinion they should appeal to many types of guys who are not overly social....the quieter types who don't wish to endure office politics and bullsh*t corporate culture.....plus the pay and benefits rock.  So what is making today's youth reject that in favor of an often worthless college degree?  I'm asking this of the schools....why are they pushing kids towards college rather than also pushing and promoting trades, as they used to?

that is the 24k question isn't Jim. Wish I had an answer but I don't.  You can understand it from the family standpoint. We were all driven by our parents and families to go to college.  My family was a recent immigrant Jim and 'getting ahead' and the American dream and all that sh*t came down heavy on my generation.  3 of my generation made it.  Two older cousins did awesome.  Jimmy got into Harvard on a damn schlorship... and ...well...  found college life so far from home (we are an Oregon based family) too much to handle. He flunked out and last I heard he was working in a shoe store.  My uncle as you might imagine was incredibly disappointed.  Another cousin did well as well.. but women being what they are.. smarter and better than us pigs.. she took her college seriously and graduated Wellesley and ended up on Wall Street.

Then there is me... I've told my story enough to not bear repeating. But me being me... I had to up the antee.  Got disowned the first time I dropped out to enlist for the Gulf War.. well they came back around and actually came to feel pride in their boy that put something greater than himself first... so of course when I dropped out a 2nd time. Only a semester short of my 2 degrees and 1 year short of a third. Well.... they didn't take it well. 

As far as the schools Jim? I'm out of touch completely with what goes on schools today so I really don't know what is going on. If that is indeed what is going on, what you say there, it really doesn't make sense. Some people just aren't cut out for college, lacking the discipline to succeed.. or those that like me.. that had the smarts and drive.. but not the desire.  I knew what I wanted to do and I choose to do it.  THe costs though? 

Thousands in debt only recently paid off... losing a wife over a painful and destructive 10 year span.. and eventually the whole of my family.  If only the schools recognized it.. only if I had.  Oh well... as I like to say.

If the journey doesn't kill you (and I am on my 10th life haven't expended my 9th a couple of years ago in that explosion) it will only make you stronger and it sure builds character haha.

not that I doubted you Jim.. but took this topic with me to work today.

Sure enough, my best friend went to the same High School I did, just 15 years behind me.  He agreed completely with you. All the shop clases, automotive, wood working that I remember the school having.. gone... gone.. replaced with.. get this. A dance studio? Dance???? DANCE!!!!!  hahaha. Awesome.

anyhow..  we did find the real cause for the lack of interest in blue collar jobs today.

The culprit? Should have figured...  Hollywood

https://business.facebook.com/attn/videos/1305416199493836/

^ A friend and I were just saying how plumbers can make great money but it still isn't considered attractive, either as a job or as a potential husband.   Maybe if the ladies start getting their hands dirty that could change.

micky wrote: HackettFan wrote: I wonder what the future work will be like. So much of the historical job market has been eliminated by automation, and will continue to eliminate jobs of ever increasing skill levels, will worker ownership be a solution? Or a very narrow and evaporating opportunity? I'd love to hear someone's perspective on this. interesting.. we've had this discussion before.  An interesting thread on a future of paying people NOT to work. In essense a state supported society. Not sure if you were around for that one. as a proud and confirmed working class blue collar stiff...with more post secondary education than most white collar workers.... the end result is obvious. A natural continuation of what we have seen of the last 30 years... the desturction of the middle class.  Who basis was upon good skilled and generally un-educated labor. Thus the end result of this.. a society lf haves.. and have nots.  The haves... paperpushers, mangers etc. The white collar jobs you don't replace with automation... and the nots.  The service industry.. low paying low skill jobs. The realm of the middle class being occupied by the few blue collar jobs that can not be replaced by automation. Like my job in which high school drop outs can start at 50k a year and top out at 6 figures.  Funny thing is, as I've pointed out in various threads hitting on this topic, jobs that white america feel are below them and are taken up by minorities and the rapidly emerging minority majority. Me and my best friend took stock just the other day. A shop of 13 people. 3 of us were white.  That is the future I suppose. And yet in my field... nearly half the work force (including me) retires or dies in the next decade or two...leaving a massive shortage in a critical job field that will only see pay rates increase.  Yet again...  Americans with their fixation on getting those (in many cases) worthless degress.. will find jobs based ON those degrees very hard to find. Yet great paying jobs are there.. will always be. And you don't have to... as I did in my youth... rack up thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt to go to college to get.

I'd under the weather the last couple days, so I'm a little slow in responding. I definitely hadn't followed that thread if I was around for it. I'm not crazy about the worthless college degree theme, but then again, the worth of mine is questionable. The only thing one does with a PhD in Linguistics is teach at a college, not all of which have linguistics, so it gets very competitive with a limited number of faculty positions (unless you're into computational linguistics, then you get scooped up by a generous private sector job with just a Master's degree. Very few computational linguists actually stay in academia long enough to get a PhD). Oklahoma doesn't pay much for educators. Primary and secondary school teachers in some areas here have to teach 18 years before they earn what is considered to be a living wage (btw, I don't think Trump's Oklahoman Education Secretary will do much for them). The most I ever earned was 50K as the Chief Academic Officer at a Tribal college. The University I teach part-time at right now is suffering hugely from low enrollment, so I don't want to discourage anyone from getting a useless degree. No, come get one, please.. And I would find it depressing if those select people with their head in the clouds (e.g. me) were steered too heavily into getting only degrees that promise monetary gain.. Oh well, though.

Anyway, one thing that's lost, especially in blue collar industry is collective bargaining, partly because of the conservative blowback, but also partly because of the sheer loss of industry. In spite of a recent apparently more favorable outlook on socialism from the younger generation, it seems like it will take Herculean effort to just get back the gains that were once made in terms of support for labor. It looks even less likely as whole industries are vanishing and people are working in the private sector or freelancing. Fewer people will be getting benefits from work too, so health care legislation becomes more and more essential, all while the ACA is repealed (Who knows, they may not be able to do it, though. Ryan is not Pelosi).




Edited by HackettFan - March 13 2017 at 20:28

JJLehto wrote: Capitalism is simply private ownership of the means of production. While Socialism is, in its intended form, worker run and owned.

I promised myself I'd not but I would like to say one lil thing. This definition is miles better than what most give, usually it comes down to "socialism is the government doing stuff". Obviously, social programs are pushed by leftists and more militant workers for their protection, but they exist entirely within a capitalist framework. How does single payer healthcare work when the products of those who work in healthcare no longer privately belong to the owner?
Which brings me to the next part: socialism, I would say, would not include a concept of "workers".
Firstly because a working class only exists in opposition to the owning class, socialists want the entire class system gone.
Secondly because some socialists (read: some Marxists) use the term work to specifically talk about the situation under which workers labor in capitalism. As you said, capitalism is dependent on the enforcement of private ownership of the means of production, and also makes use of a market. Those owners hire workers, who then do work for them, and the owner takes the things they make (which can be either a good or service) and sells them (in hopes for a profit). The money is then reinvested and the cycle continues, you get the idea.
The workers in this system create commodities, which is a word that basically means that they produce it for exchange (not to get into exchange-value lol). This whole process is seen by socialists as alienating. Workers use their own labor to create things of value, regardless of what it is, whether a service, a good, a performance, etc. but it is immediately divorced from them, it is produced to be sold. The value of their work is never their own. You can work all day in a kitchen making food for customers but you still go home to an empty pantry. You must buy the products of another worker's labor in order to sustain yourself.
One way to think of socialism is to think of it in terms of production for need. This separates itself from the previous idea of work at the very start of the process. People still use their labor to create useful things, but not for individual profit; only for the needs of those who use those things. The idea of a workplace separate from the rest of social life wouldn't exist properly in this sense. In a quote, "The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that the firm has a boss."

This is also not to say that exchanging things is capitalist in and of itself, that would be patently untrue. Capitalism as a mode of production came about as a specific system through the consequence of various philosophical, political, and social happenings such as the enlightenment, liberalism, the french revolution, the enclosing of land that was held in common (this is particularly interesting I think, in terms of understanding class. Peasants could subsist off common land, the enclosing of it and the production of private property forced the peasantry (sometimes violently) off this land and to seek a new means of living, ie becoming a worker), so-called primitive accumulation (a process that was fueled by colonialism, including things like slavery) and so on.
Well, that was more than one little thing, oops.

Too simplistic question.

For me neither system in its pure form is ideal.  Capitalism needs to tempered by socialism.