>>But that said, going to court contradicts co-operative principles in that it is inherently adversarial. It is a fine way of settling disputes where there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest, but the principles of co-operation are premised on a mutuality of interests.
>
>That settles it for me (but I knew this already): I do not believe that three human beings in any set of social relations hatsoever can ever attain the mutuality of interests that you require here. What I mean by an irreconcilable conflict of intrerest is systematic, dominator vs dominated, exploiter vs exploiter, oppressor vs. oppressed. That can, I believe, be pretty generally eliminated. My hypothetical conflict about the widgets is not of this sort. It is local and temporary. But you see a society without even local and temporary conflicts. I think you have beens moking something fairly heavy.
Hey Justin, I'm not the paranoid one. I swore off the heavy smoke the first time I experienced that effect, it scared the hell out of me.
>
>>Of course your example was about a conflict between supplier and customer in what is effectively a class society. You call it "market socialism", but I wouldn't call it socialism at all, a better name would be "democracy tempered market", if such a thing is possible.
>
>Call it what you like, what are the classes when all able bodied people are both producers and owners, and no one is a wage worker?
I explained that.
> But my point was more general and applies to planned socialism too. The problem arises in planning pretty often, matter of fact.
>
>>Ayhow, in the kind of society you describe, which retains class conflict between employers and employees,
>
>No, not in anything I would call socialism.
>
>>buyers and sellers,
>
>These are not classes. What sort of Marxist are you?
>
>>rulers and ruled,
>
>Not classes, again.
I'll concede that buyers and sellers are not classes, I got carried away. But rulers and ruled certainly are. I didn't say I was a Marxist BTW. You can call me a Marxist and I won't complain, but you can't flatter me as a Marxist on the one hand, then challenge my bona-fides as a Marxist on the other hand.
>>. But in the context of a socialist society, there would be no need for laws of contract and outside arbitration of contracts, because there would be no *irreconcilable* conflict of interest. The only disputes arising would be questions of priorities and strategies, which can best be settled democratically.
>
>I'm lost. So, in my "contract" dispute,
No, I made it clear Justin, this is "in the context of a socialist society", where there would be no contracts. You can't have got lost that quickly, its all there.
> I go to the works' councul and ask for a vote in which, what? The contract breachers pay my damages?
There is no contract dispute Justin, because there is no contract. I made that clear.
> Make good their contract? And this is enforced how?
There is no contract. Please, I cannot discuss anything with you if you ignore the clearly status premise of what I say.
> Look, a court is, or can be, a democratic institution (most state court judgesa re elected,
A system of appointing judges I find repugnant BTW.
>matter of fact, though I think appointed judiciaries make for better law);
Indeed it does. It is appalling to think of judges currying favour and fearing disapproval, while trying to administer the law without fear or favour. Only a moral bankrupt would even contemplate such a career in the US.
> if you want to have disputes resolved by an arbitration board or even a works council, fine, but don't you sewe that as long the decisions are enforceable you have conceded everything I urged?
Decisions about *things* would be enforceable, but not contracts between people.
>>If I may consider your example in the context of the sort of genuine socialist society I was discussing, if my production facility received 8000 widgets late, I would probably whinge and moan, but put up with it. If they were no good, I would scrap them and get them somewhere else next time and tell everyone else. But either way, there is no loss in the capitalist sense. My plant produces goods for use, not for profit. The plant has lost production, society as a whole is microscopically less wealthy as a whole, but these things happen.
>
>Meanwhile, my users are out what I was going to make them, and (since we are talking about a nonmarket socialism, arguendo, the plan is disrupted, and we have given the contract breachers no incentive whatsoever to behave better.
Sigh, there is no contract breach, because there is no contract.
But anyhow, they also have no incentive to behave badly Justin. I would invite you to consider the implications of that. They do their work in an entirely voluntary capacity, why would they bother to make bad widgets that they know are just going to be scrapped? If you were in their position, would you do that?
Consider this, often people employed as firefighters deliberately light fires, to create work for themselves. This is actually perfectly rational behaviour. On the other hand, if a voluntary firefighter were to go around deliberately lighting fires, it would be quite irrational behaviour, since the incentive is lacking.
> Multiply thsi idae by every industry in the country,a nd you have (as Mises and Hayek predicted) no plan, nop predictability, no incentives to be efficient, you have al great balls-up, is what you have.
You also have no incentive to be inefficient. That's a big step forward. You would have a plan though and as much predictability as voluntary compliance permits. You are basically arguing that the only way to get people to comply with a plan, or to be efficient, is to coerce them. Consider that coercion is also counter-productive. People sometimes resent it. Being part of the plan, "ownership" of the plan, is a great incentive.
>>You can see that, in this context, a legal battle is completely irrelevant. If someone was hurt as a result, then some kind of coronial inquest to determine the cause and recommend ways to avoid this happening in the future, would be called for. But contract law would be pointless,
>
>That's what a contract case does: it determines what happened--was their breach? And if there was, it gives the breacher an incentive to find out what happened and to do better next time.
Contract law is solely about compensation for personal loss suffered Justin, you know that. If there are no personal risk or losses, there is no need for a contract.
>since all losses are socialised in a society where the means of production is socialised. The supplier of the faulty widgets suffers the same losses as the destined user.
>>
>
>??? Does the supplier of faulty parts for akidney diaylisis machine DIE?
No. But of course the dead person cannot benefit from any compensation for breach of contract either. It is hardly a solution to the problem.
>> >>The decision can easily be enforced by the operators of a myriad of other production facilities. They would simply cease supplying raw materials etc to the rogue plant.
>>>
>>>That would fuck things up for everyone downstream of the plant. Do you want impose the costs of a local dispute on large chunks of society?
>>
>>Well, that *is* the point of socialising the means of production.
>
>No it's not. The point of socialsim the means of production is to prevent concentrations of power,
Not in my book Justin. The point of socialism in my book is to eliminate poverty and want. The prevention of concentrations of power is far too modest an objective, it is an objective that can be achieved by simpler and more modest strategies, such as political democracy and anti-trust laws.
>>That's what *political* governance means. Government of the people. It isn't what economic government means. The latter, socialism, is about governing *things*, not people.
>
>No succh thing. You can yell, LATHE, MAKE ME A WIDGET all you like, but unless you have ther human input, it won't. Government is a relation among people, not between people and things.
Your premise is that government is solely about giving orders. Government is also about managing. Managing is more than giving orders to subordinates to achieve certain objectives, it involves the more demanding work of co-ordinating all the various factors and inputs.
I have managed a business that only had volunteer labour, it can be done. It is harder to co-ordinate volunteers than it is to simply direct subordinates, I admit that. In fact I confess that I'm not temperamentally well-suited to it and wasn't very good at that part of it. (So often I had to do penance for my interpersonal mistakes by filling in for absent volunteers personally.) Nevertheless, despite my grievous shortcomings, the business ran surprisingly smoothly. In fact it became the market leader in its field and was very profitable.
On the one hand, the labour inputs were very inefficient. Frankly, it would have been more cost-efficient to simply get rid of all the volunteers and employ paid staff. But there were many benefits. Most of the volunteers only did tasks they felt capable of, they had little incentive to cover-up their mistakes and they were well-motivated and because they only worked as much as they felt like and they usually related well to the customers because they weren't over-worked. There was also little tension between workers, as you would expect when there are no considerations of economic rivalry. (I worked in a voluntary capacity too of course.)
There are problems with this approach, but my experience was that the problems were mostly of a nature that arose from the context of the society we live in. A society characterised by economic insecurity. You'd be surprised at how little theft there was though. I wasn't surprised, but then I'm a trusting soul.
>>But I fail to see what would be served by attempting to coerce workers at a plant to do something they aren't willing to do freely.
>>
>
>Getting things done in a reasonably timely and nonwasteful manner--getting working parts to the dialysis machines, for example, in time to keep people alive. That's an extreme example, but a real one.
You are assuming that most people would negligently damage life-saving equipment except only for the negative consequences of doing so. Perhaps the idea that they might kill someone is a sufficient negative consequence in itself? It would be enough to motivate me to be careful. What about you?
>>a socialist society does not require coercive mechanisms to force people to follow orders. It sounds much more attractive than a society which does.
>>
>
>If anyone could descrime for me--even abstractly--mechanism that would create incentives to behave in anything like the way you think theyw ll, I'd like to hear it.
First things first Justin, first let's think about removing the incentives to behave badly. Perhaps then we'll find that there's less need for penalties to deter people from behaving badly. Humans are social animals you see, social approval and respect are built-in incentives to behave well.
They aren't 100% effective of course, but then neither are penalties and threats. The real problem in our current society though, I suggest, is that there are strong incentives to behave badly. Economic insecurity is the primary incentive to be selfish, dishonest and cruel. Greed, for money and power, is rational in that context, it may diminish us emotionally, but when we perceive our survival is threatened, that is a powerful incentive to act anti-socially.
The main incentive I am proposing is to remove the threat of economic insecurity. To remove the main incentive to behave badly. You propose, on the other hand, to retain the incentive to behave badly, you then explain that there will need to be a system of enforcement to deal with that threat. I agree, there would be a need, in that context.
But if you were to think outside of that box, you might very well agree with me that, if the incentive to behave badly were to be eliminated, then perhaps the enforcement structure to behave well would consequently be unnecessary?
If not, why not?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas