Ask HN: Advocates of socialized production, why and how?

"What are the incentives to advance amd become highly skilled? Take doctors. Some are really passionate about what they do. Most may be a little passionate, but are mainly just intelligent people drawn by the money and prestige. Assuming medical school and university still exists, for what purpose would someone go through that pipeline when they could do something far easier?"

This is the argument I usually don't understand. Sure, it's hard. But well working in heavy industry is hard. Working customer service is damn hard. I'd be happy to read a lot of books and sew someone's wound up and get fed for it.

Maybe a better argument is why doctors and nurses get paid so differently. You probably need more nurses than doctors for a medical procedure. But the supply of doctors is lower. It's not that being a nurse is easier. It'd that the people who become nurses often don't qualify as doctors.

For me, things I'd qualify for might be writing, cooking, drawing, and programming. One of these pays far more than the others. Cooking professionally is probably a lot harder and yet more fun, but the economics don't add up. I can serve maybe 100 people a day at a restaurant, but I can serve millions/day writing code.

I think there's a kind of moralism here where people want to think they're richer because they had to sacrifice more. But often it's because they lucked into a well paid skillset.

You're conflating hard with requiring skill and knowledge. Doctors tend to have a much deeper well of knowledge than most nurses. Almost anyone can do customer service without exactly 0 years of training. Becoming a doctor is a much more difficult process than customer service. Becoming a competent programmer is much more difficult than customer service. I've worked customer service jobs and while it's not fun nor easy, the requisite skill required is much less than actual skilled labour

I am not a real advocate, but Jacque Fresco has been told some ideas of how it might look if completed. Like round cities with all the good things in center and if you take a cam (for example) and after some time return a cam and a good photos/videos then you deserve to take a better cam. As far as I have understood, the key to such transformation is that people has to get rid of money somehow.

But of course there are not any ideas except one programmer's joke that all the governments might be replaced with one little script of code. Maybe we should return to this discussion after some examples of the script will be appeared somewhere.

Your questions are valid, but you have to realize that they are not the gotchas that you think they are. Socialists - who are the ones advocating for socialized production - have been writing books providing elaborate answers for your questions for over 100 years. Those socialists have thought long and deep about those problems and if you haven't you should listen to what they have to say. Like, someone who has never written a line of Lisp in their life should first learn the language before stating that it is impractical.

Your first question assumes that jobs can be ranked on a shittyness scale. This is true in a capitalist society, but why is it true? Why is developing software at Microsoft less shitty than frying burgers at McDonald's? Is the act of frying burgers shit and the act of typing source code on a computer less shit? Is walking dogs more shit than lecturing at universities? The answer to these questions are no, or else people wouldn't fry burgers at home and they would not buy dogs.

The shittyness of a job is more dependent to the employee's circumstances, like how much autonomy they have, their social standing, job security, treatment by others, etc, than the actual tasks performed.

I enjoy solving problems on a computer, I don't enjoy working in a hot, greasy, rushed environment. Some jobs can be objectively ranked and pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

Exactly how idk, I leave that to the economist experts. I just want full proletarian ownership of the means of production so the theft of our production through surpus value from paying low wages. This can only happen after revolution as the bourgeoisie will never willingly give away their privileges and control of the whole society.

Economist experts will tell you it's a non-starter

One doesn't need to be an expert to know why: freeloaders and tragedy of the commons to begin with...

> 1. Who does the hard/dirty jobs in this society? Farming being one. But also construction, sewage, trash, ad inifitum. There are a lot of undesirable jobs and while maybe some people would be willing, I doubt our needs could be met when the same individuals could just work an easier job for the same reward.

Think about what you're saying here. Why don't the people who do these jobs currently not just work at an easier job? If the answer is because they live in a societal trap that prevents them from exploring better options then clearly there is something worth examining here. We shouldn't support social systems that rely on exploitation to function.

Personally, I am not convinced that "progress" is an unmitigated good that should be pursued at maximum speed and efficiency, so I am not convinced that all of these undesirable jobs are truly necessary for society to flourish. For the jobs that are necessary, I think people would do them, even without special compensation, because the costs of not doing them would rapidly become apparent.

I don't agree that socializing all means of production is the best antidote to what ails us, but I do think that "all-in" on capitalism has failed as a general policy. I would like to see meaningful limits placed upon any private entity's ability to consolidate cash and market share across vast swathes of the earth's surface. As it is the financial health of local communities are at the whim of a handful of multinational juggernauts who let their pools of capital trickle across the globe in arbitrary rivulets. The result is that the members of most communities have little chance of effectively competing in local markets, the mom and pops get replaced by the walmarts and the starbucks and everyone is stuck working to move the fruits of their labor upstream and out of their community.

Alternatively, some sort of "basic income" could potentially alleviate some of the pressures, but I see this solution as more of a temporary band-aid.

Every country that has tried this has failed miserably. It can be extremely hard even on a small scale.

The only thing coming close is Social Democracy. But in Social Democracy there is usually lots of capitalism going on. Sometimes with highly perverse incentives, if the markets has been altered in a ham-fisted way.

In conclusion, the track record for socialized production is not stellar. Far from it.

Socialism has never been tried. State capitalism has been tried, that's what China has and what the Soviet Union had.

Socialism cannot be allowed to happen because it is too much of a threat to the powers that be.

The day Socialism is actually tried by any country, the surrounding countries will wage economic and physical war against it.

Propaganda to conflate state capitalism with socialism has been extremely successful.

Socialism was tried in many places, but it's self-destructive - it's all about big and powerful state, which immediately gets exploited and ultimately perverted. It's impossible to implement a human-managed socialistic economical system. Maybe if machines managed it, it could work - but I'm in no hurry to try.

Socialism has never been tried.

Scotsmen have never put sugar on their porridge.

Yeah, but that's not true.

It is. I have explained it in my comment. I will not be replying anymore though. Talking about socialism in HN is like talking about atheism in a Catholic church.

You explained nothing. I live in a country that democratically voted for socialism and actually tried to implement it, only to see it fail spectacularly and have foreign influences inserted into the state. This meme of "socialism has never been tried" needs to die already.

I am sorry that you feel that way.

Sure, I guess I will try to assume that you are making this comment in good faith.

Tell me the name of your country and I will tell you why it wasn't socialism.

Socialism has properties that defines it, just like State capitalism has properties that defines it.

If the contional of those properties match one over the other, what does that tell you?

I don't need you to explain the history of my state/nation.

> [...] what does that tell you?

That the properties of socialism are unattainable and trying to do so leads to immeasurable tragedy.

It was wrong of me to assume you made your previous comment in good faith.

Good day, sir.

Currently in society capitalism optimizes for profit over everything else. That is if killing babies (via pollution or whatever) yields a higher profit than not, Mr CEO will do that or risk not being as competitive as the company with a psychopath at the helm.

An alternative way of organising society and production would be to optimise for the good of society instead of just profit.

Attempts have been made to fix capitalism via regulations such as "the non-baby kill act of whatever". However, our "democratic" system is not really democratic, it more like an oligarchy. Therefore, MR CEO has to take into account bribing politicians to influence regulation in order to maximize profits.

Instead of patching capitalism, a better idea is to introduce democracy from the ground up. That is we acknowledge that the work place has a greater impact on our daily lives than the government itself. If the workplace is ruled as a dictatorship, then workers of that place spend most of their productive time under an authoritarian regime.

Democracy of the workplace would mean that every worker has a vote on how the company is ruled.

Compensation would be a matter of concensus between the workers. Which would address the inequality we currently face.

The idea that your friend had of a farmer working for free or some sort of barter is not something I share.

How does this system take workers' interests into account? Some may be interested in doing the job and then go home. Them making decisions could end up looking like they vote for whatever their politically interested friend tells them to.

What happens when a majority emerges composed of workers that are very interested and workers disinterested in workplace politics that they can make disfavorable decisions about the resulting minority?

Such company could face the risk of hostile takeover by new hires if there were a need of quick hiring to fulfill for example the needs of big new customer.

>How does this system take workers' interests into account? Some may be interested in doing the job and then go home. Them making decisions could end up looking like they vote for whatever their politically interested friend tells them to.

How does democracy takes the voter's interests into account? In your example you describe a hypothetical employee who doesn't have interest in how the workplace is run, then ask me how his lack of interest is represented as an interest? What's wrong with having the interest of people who are interested in the outcome represented. I don't understand your point.

>What happens when a majority emerges composed of workers that are very interested and workers disinterested in workplace politics that they can make disfavorable decisions about the resulting minority?

Then that would prompt them to become interested? I have never met anyone in all my years of working who exhibit the apathy you describe. People become apathetic when their voices are not heard.

>Such company could face the risk of hostile takeover by new hires if there were a need of quick hiring to fulfill for example the needs of big new customer.

You could solve that with some probation period before voting or something like that. But why are you assuming new hires are hostile? Why will new hires take over? They are not a foreign army nor would they be a homegenous group with a malicious agenda.

Look I know hacker news is a hostile environment for these ideas. OP wanted a different perspective and I have given it to him. We can iron out details but overall high level thinking, I think is sound.

> "Well humans would just have to fundamentally change their nature and learn to live like x."

This is the answer that Marx gave (Communist Man) and the deepest answer we'll ever get because it's nonsense at the fundamental level.

Asking about socialism on HN, you're not going to get great responses. The politics on this site can be pretty gross. I'm also not sure production being socialized really equates to the money-free society you're envisioning but I'll try to respond with my thoughts.

1. Who does the hard/dirty jobs in this society? Farming being one. But also construction, sewage, trash, ad inifitum.

I suspect quite a few people would be happy to spend their time farming or construction if they had their druthers. But that aside, you're asking "Without desperation and poverty, who's going to do the dirty work?" I don't do the job I have now because it's the thing I always want to do, but it carries incentives. If a garbage man's schedule was from 5am-9am every day, for example, maybe a lot of people would sign up to be done working that early.

But what if you really changed your thinking? What if we didn't need garbage men because we found a way to automate their job? Or because things were set up completely differently and people just bring their own garbage to a collection point in their neighborhood?

People are cheaper than developing automation in many sectors. Without perverse economic incentives, how many shit jobs could be done by robots or computers?

2. How are "needs" defined?

Everything you listed is a need. Some of those needs could be met without private ownership, as we already have libraries for sharing books / movies / games without needing to buy them. There is no reason you need to own all those things.

And the things you do want to own like your mattress, for example, could absolutely be free. Why would somebody hoard them?

3. What are the incentives to advance amd become highly skilled? Take doctors.

Doctors are a really poor example. Many doctors go through the process out of a genuine desire to help, only to find themselves kneecapped by debt. They often complain about the need to spend too much of their time dealing with insurance paperwork, and would rather just help people.

And while some do it for the prestige and money, and maybe some of those people would go on to other professions, do we really want them? How many other people would love to go to medical school but don't for financial reasons?

> Well humans would just have to fundamentally change their nature and learn to live like x.

It's not about changing your nature. It's about understanding how much of what you consider "nature" is a learned response to an environment. The entire capitalist structure is artifice; nature doesn't even come close!

I think a lot of answers to this question fall into the Nirvana Fallacy

> By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely implausible—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect.

Since this is known at least subconsciously, most of these answers would be very unconvincing to anyone who isn't already a true believer in socialism. This is of course unavoidable as we do not have a working system of socialism but we do have many working but flawed systems of capitalism.

How do we fix this? I am not sure. Maybe we can get a few working models one day.