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Comment by itsanaccount | Hacker News Reader

I think its interesting when reading The Expanse that its mentioned fundamental technology is advanced by "tech collectives." Like all organization in that scifi, its touched on only briefly, but reading articles like this and the recent Boeing madness makes me think that the future of humanities technologic progress is not something to be left to the marketplace of capital, where people are fungible, because they're not. That to succeed in complex endeavors we need more complex organizations than gov, business, nonprofit.

Probably off topic but if you find yourself in some kind of monastic tech co-op that builds things because they are good first and valuable second, hmu.

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There's a nice posting bunniestudios.com about how the city of Shenzhen is such a collective for electronics.

There are others. I live in an area with a lot of small companies that build complicated expensive products for small audiences. Want a croissant-baking machine? There's long institutional knowhow here.

What would be specialized about baking a croissant? Or do you mean you put in flour and butter and croissants come out? I would pay handsomely for the second.

croissants (and any other delicate pastry) require precise humidity and temperature control for reliable results.

Think PID controllers which control the heat/humidity through the baking cycle, or, conveyer-based systems with zones of specific temperature/humidity.

In addition, very modern systems, they are using computer vision systems to dynamically analyze the baking to ensure perfect doneness.

More repeatable results with less skilled labor is less waste is more profits.

How? How how how?

This silly debate comes up everywhere these days as railing against the current western economic system has come in vogue on the web. But it's not enough to complain, I can fill bookshelves with Reddit comments that do that, we need to imagine solutions!

A sibling comment pointed out Mondragon which uses the ParEcon form of economic management which is an actual answer to the question. I'd love to see other answers.

Bog standard industrial protectionism, as used by Alexander Hamilton to industrialize the United States.

They don't often mention that part when they talk about trade liberalization, do they? This shit has been understood for centuries, but asset-owners just can't help themselves when they get a chance to pump at the expense of export-makers, even if it's literal communists they are selling us out to. I'd rather not sell out to the literal communists, so let's (continue to) roll back the changes. If we don't do it voluntarily, our hollowed out industrial base will eventually start losing us wars and it will happen involuntarily, with a lot more pain.

> our hollowed out industrial base will eventually start losing us wars

These are not the 1940s, you cannot convert a car plant to produce jet fighters. So the industrial base writ large is irrelevant. If you are really afraid of losing a world war, you are advocating for expanding the MIC specifically. Problem as Eisenhower put it is that you would hang humanity from a cross of iron. MIC spending necessarily crowds out economic activity for civilian benefit.

Anyway, our MIC is quite large already.

> These are not the 1940s, you cannot convert a car plant to produce jet fighters

If your understanding of supply chains is so poor that it does not encompass more than a single vertically integrated entity, this deficiency will lead you to catastrophically incorrect conclusions like:

> the industrial base writ large is irrelevant

This in particular:

> If you are really afraid of losing a world war, you are advocating for expanding the MIC specifically

is an egregiously inept straw man. Not only are many industrial machines dual use, most are dual use. In fact, I propose a challenge: I'll name an industrial machine that is dual use and you respond with one that isn't. We go back and forth until we have settled the matter.

I'll start: plastic injection molding machine

First, I don't understand your hostility. Why do you want to turn this into a flame war?

Second, if there is a war between US and China we are fighting with the military we brought to the party. Concretely, in the scenario of a hot war over Taiwan we either break a Chinese blockade in relatively short order or Taiwan is forced to capitulate and we have nothing left to fight over. Taiwan cannot last long enough for us to shift to a war economy.

Third, even if we were to assume Taiwan could last, or that we would undertake to eventually liberate Taiwan, a total war where we are rushing to re-purpose our plastic injection molding machines is fantasy. A total war between nuclear powers? It is IMO an irresponsible concept. The eventual escalation would render industry (again) irrelevant.

Fourth, even with dual use technology you cannot convert civilian industry to military industry on a reasonable timescale for such a fight - not in the Cold War and certainly not today. Spinning up new production of jet fighters is one example. But then think about the USN - a critical branch in a fight over Taiwan. Naval strategy is built strategy. I do not think you produce a single carrier before the war is done, not even from existing yards unless work started before the war.

This is relatively well-trodden ground since the Korean war. The entire Cold War, we tried in various ways to reckon with the fact that military preparedness now required a permanent investment in arms production. So yes, I think if you want to be better prepared for war with China you should advocate for a permanent expansion of the MIC, and I further think our MIC is large enough already.

>I'd love to see other answers.

Workplace democracy is the only answer. Any other system is just some form of private ownership, with all the same problems. If we have a different system for choosing owners, it's either not private ownership or we arrive right back where we started.

Direct democracy at a company would be a fun experiment that I'd love to be a part of.

You should take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

There is a template for running a business in a new way. Mondragon has sort of reached the limit of what they can do as a single institution.

Farmers, have been running coops for a long time. They work and are very effective. Again nothing new here just not in the headlines. I will say that the irony should be lost on no one that rural farmers have a form of working corporate socialism that most urban professionals desire.

HMU, can't find your contact details ! anucleonfreezer at gmail.com

The expanse doesn't really paint a very nice picture of the future of human society though :)

It's also, you know, fiction. You can tell because of the wormholes and aliens and magic.

Oh yes of course but I don't think it's a coincidence that every Sci-Fi that has enormous megacorporations is also incredibly dystopian. Think also of Blade Runner (it's a core theme in the cyberpunk genre it spawned). And Firefly, probably a lot more. Which Sci-Fi franchise has ultra-powerful corporations and isn't dystopian? Don't forget Sci-Fi is a product of our own civilisation.

I think we all know deep down that the current ultracapitalist model will bring us to doom. Because we're already most of the way there. That gets incorporated in to Sci-Fi because people will feel it's more realistic.

I always loved the more socialist take of Star Trek (especially TNG). They even did away with the whole concept of money "We work to better ourselves". Pretty revolutionary in the 80s but it feels even more so now.

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