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0 pointsxster8y ago0 comments

I think it's worth taking a step back and looking at the grand scheme. Everything is a non-binary spectrum.

As an example, if you temporarily suspend societal norm (which is what I'm challenging here), to think that we have the audacity to pretend that we know how to tax people and objectively rate society's needs and redistribute wealth into various public programs in a way that's objectively fair to everyone is absurd if we try to think of objectivity as a binary thing.

But our policies obviously have socialistic elements because we don't dogmatically lock ourselves in a strict dichotomy.

And I argue for the same thing in work compensation. Some form of pure cosmic objectivity may not ever be possible but it doesn't mean we should ideologically oppose attempts to approach that end of the spectrum.

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colemannugent8y ago

Since you mentioned socialism I thought I'd try and address that as well.

The problem with redistribution of wealth and price setting by governments is that they cannot properly price goods and services because they have no vested interest in the effect of the resulatant price. As an analogy, it would be like sending your friend Donald Trump to buy your groceries for you, he would have no idea what he should be paying and would likely spend too much or purchase goods that you wouldn't have.

You say that we should keep our minds open in the hope that in the future this problem could be solved, but I think that by trying to look towards the future you look past the advantages of the free market.

As this relates to work compensation, the Trump analogy is still somewhat applicable. You wouldn't send Trump to negotiate your salary as he would probably overvalue you and ask for way more than you're worth to the employer, who would promptly tell both of you to look elsewhere. In a system where the government set your wages this would be great for you, as the employer would be forced to hire you at whatever ridiculous price Trump comes up with, but terrible for the business who depends on you making them more money than they spend on you. Such a system could never sustain itself in the hybrid socialist state, but would be forced to resort to complete government control of prices and wages as the weight of their own bad decsions weighed the system down.

In the capitalist/free-market system the individual takes the hit for making bad decisions, in the socialist/communist system everyone does.

There are systems that are more consistent in the way they reward employees, Gitlab [1] comes to mind, but what happens when the economy shifts and the compensation rates that the algorithm spits out are now way over or below what is normal for that position? They now have to change their algorithm again, which is effectively right where we started at as new hires will all be based off a new algorithm which would lead to dissent from the older employees.

[1]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

uoaei8y ago

You've lumped "redistribution of wealth" in with "price setting" as if they are in any way related to each other. They certainly can interact if they're both present, but neither need to be there for the other to exist.

I'm actually having trouble following your line of reasoning because I can't tell how these two are related in your formulation of the hypothetical.

xsterOP8y ago

This might be a flippant response but I feel like my original response still applies (in that not everything need to fall into idealogical dichotomies). I feel like seeing the word 'socialistic' (which wasn't really the point of my response) automatically triggered a generic response on a strawman cold war USSR but the dichotomy is manufactured and on a spectrum, there are tons of socialistic elements in our government.

Anyway, that's all besides the point. In your analogies, I feel like I was arguing exactly for the opposite of what you're saying. I'm saying "let the pillar of capitalism (freedom of information) be a pillar of capitalism" and you're saying that I'm saying "proletariats of the world unite! don't forget to budget some gulags in our next 5 year plan".

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