What if you had capitalism, but all land is owned by the state and cannot be bought or sold, and the constitution guarantees all citizens a home distributed to each according to their ability and needs, provided that they either: A) work for the state, and/or B) pay a private sector tax proportional to any private sector profit/income earned. The highest private sector tax rate would be 100% for any income earned above the highest income of a state employee (ex. scientist, senior engineer, surgeon). Anyone caught evading this tax would have all their assets seized by the state, and they would be forced into hard labour / military work to do the same amount of work equivalent to the amount of taxes they failed to pay the state.
Kim Jong Un says he wants ideas for capitalist reform and opening up, he's leaning towards Vietnam's 1986 Doi Moi Policy at the moment, but I think that goes way too far because their absolute highest tax rate is only 35%, all homes were privatised, the state seized a ton of property and kicked out the residents for their foreign investment-privatisation projects, and has led to an explosion of street homelessness.
when it comes to economics I think there should be a balance between private and public. People should have their rights and guaranteed services, but they should also be allowed to own stuff as well. As for businesses, I think the average person should be able to start up something local, but nothing too big. Workers deserve that sorta stuff if they rly want to help society.
Owen Bennett
This seems to be Cuba’s model of dealing with the private sector right now. I don’t know as much about Vietnam, but it seems more revisionist. I would think that is a bad change.
Ethan Anderson
You didn't mention anything about housing and the inevitability of increasing homeless due to capitalist logic.
Ryder Taylor
Excuse me but what the fuck is the difference between us now?
Asher Peterson
I'd love to play the armchair economist and give advice to hypothetical Koreans reading this and I think my unusual and broad knowledge would be very useful (yes, I'm fully aware of how douchey this sounds, can't help myself), but I don't know enough about what the current regulations in North Korea are like. All I could find about the Taean Work System is extremely vague, so I don't know how much input from workers is worth (to what extent is it just suggestions to higher-ups or directly binding decisions).
I have some ideas about how to do socialist housing, but I don't know how housing currently works in NK, so how could I write proper advice about how to change housing policy? Would like to know how common arrangements are where people who are not family are sharing living facilities. In my mind, this is a very sensible thing to do. But I have no idea what attitude people in North Korea have towards that. The only thing I "know" about housing there is a bit I got from western sources, sources of the same type that would spread nonsense "news" about NK women not being allowed to ride bicycles. It was the statement that people moving in pay to people for moving out, without either party really being owners.
First gather information, then think, gather more, think again, and only then give advice. We are stuck at step one.
Benjamin Price
We should have a dynamic digital plan that's able to allocate resources to local initiatives on a day's notice. No privatization. We gotta get rid of the commodity system.
We plan the distribution of resources on a single digital platform. You'll be able to see what shipments are being made all over the economy just by logging onto a website. If someone wants to start a new business, they have to get support for this from workers (represented through some investment board perhaps), prove that it will be beneficial in getting some people's needs fulfilled, and set a few concrete goals for the project. Then we'll get you the stuff you need by simply channeling some goods, and recognizing you as a productive worker with some labor tokens.
There don't need to be any significant barriers here. Free enterprise would boom.
Xavier Murphy
how big too big? will they pay wages? what will regulate the wages, if services are guarenteed what will the wages be paid in given currency would be de facto worthless?
James Green
I just think that there shouldn't be monopolies and stupidly huge corporations.
Let's say someone wants to start up a repair shop or something, why shouldn't they? Right now advocates for the free market say everyone has the freedom to do so, but capitalist societies just don't work out for workers who want to fulfill that dream. These corporations crush workers who want to do something on their own because of their passion for work, all due to competition and greed. The reason people hate socialism so much is because they fear they're gonna be "punished" for being "successful" and that money will be going to those who don't deserve it. They're greedy.
If you help society, pay into the system, and WORK by any means necessary (if you're able to), then there's no reason for you to live anything less than a comfortable life in that country (Healthcare, education, security, etc).
If it all works correctly, you're gonna have everyone on the same level of comfort - which will hopefully be a high standard of living, not a low one like capitalist propaganda depicts:
All of this is petty bourj apologia. Larger enterprises are desirable because they benefit from economies of scale. Allowing less labor to produce more goods. It's one reason why luxury cars are so much more expensive than ordinary cars. With increased scale, production processes become more energy efficient, and supply networks become less complex. There's no reason to have a trillion "small business" mom & pop stores, other than to satisfy the subversive, exploitative attitudes of a tiny reactionary strata. Who btw, will never be satisfied with anything other than "pure" "free market" capitalism. That said, there are times however where it pays to take a hands off approach: When you're dealing with an underdeveloped economy, and you need to accrue foreign investment to kickstart industries (As happened in East Asia). But this doesn't require tolerating "small businesses" as much as opening up an economy to (foreign) investment. Many of China's leading enterprises today where build with the infusion of foreign capital. Including Tencent, Alibaba, etc.
Mind, the problem is not freelancers who just work on a contract basis. But what you imply are just "workers who want to do something on their own" are - most of the time - just aspiring capitalists. Sillicon valley and other places abound with these types, and they're really just looking to become the next Musks, Bezos' or Zuckerbergs. Most importantly, the whole arrangement is unnecessary. Even top executives are seldom working harder than their employees. But this is what petty bourgoeis ideology wants you to believe: That "entrepreneurs" aren't just smarter - even as they steal other people's ideas - but that they work twice, thrice or ten times harder than anyone else. In reality, they're just expending about as much energy and time as the rest of us. They're not "special", and unless they have a very particular skill set that they can threaten to take elsewhere, there's no need to compensate them at several dozen times the rate of other workers.
That said, there are plenty of innovative ideas worth supporting. But then again, the state can step in to support these efforts, just as has happened many times before. Besides, in a world where nearly everyone has internet access, ideas cannot remain hidden for long. And without intellectual property laws allowing capitalists to monopolize everything from life-saving pharmaceuticals to scientific research (often paid for by public money), these people can just live anywhere on the planet, and we could still use their ideas.
Also these sort of people don't hate socialism because they're not allowed to be "successful" - scientists and inventors were venerated in every socialist country - they just want to have a free reign to exploit others, and think "Big Business" is unfairly advantaged and stalling their god-given right to rise to the top.
So is Kim Jong-Un considered an expert on everything? All those officers are taking notes. Is Un telling them how to fix the bed and make the room look nice? Is he an expert interior designer?
Jackson Powell
So now we went from full public ownership, to "there can be some smaller businesses", to "we need liberalization so we can get foreign investment so that we can have large private companies like tencent and alibaba". What is left of socialism? What is the difference between ML and socdem/keynesian policy when ML's suddenly go "we need a mix of public and private!" like fucking Cenk Uygur? I know the answer: the authoritarian one party political system and the """"dictatorship of the proletariat"""".
Isaiah King
The movement to abolish the present state of things acts in mysterious ways It's really just a matter of necessity. China could have attempted it's modernization program without access to foreign capital and knowledge, but it would have taken them much longer. In just four decades China has gone from being an impoverished backwater with most of the population living in Bangladesh/rural Africa tier poverty, to being the world's industrial hegemon and a leader in several fields of science and engineering.
I know Deng gets a lot of flak here for "abandoning socialism". But they simply picked the fastest approach. You just cannot overcome capitalism without advanced productive forces, even the Soviet Union showed this. And as China didn't enjoy the immense energy resources and autarchy of the SU, it had to take a different approach.
And recently (With Xi's tenure) the situation has begun to reverse: Previously privatized companies are being (re-)nationalized, neoliberal think tanks are being shut down, state companies are being merged, central planning is strengthened, foreign companies are forced to comply with the demands of organized labor, and executives are either being shoved out, or told to toe the line.
OP it literally can't be capitalism if it's not based around enabling the exploitation of the proletariat through rent-seeking. There's such a thing as markets without capitalism. The capitalism part is the part where the state enables private actors to exploit and control people, and to influence said state to a vast degree, to the point where its hard to tell where one starts and the other stops, not the market or private enterprise part
Bentley Jenkins
I want those sources too. China not being porked is my wet dream.
Aaron Garcia
Based an Xipilled
Jacob Rivera
Hmm. Xi Jinpilled?
Grayson Barnes
With a strong government hand in private sectors, you'd think they wouldn't get away with exploiting people? If not, maybe they're just trying to be a cheap China clone and not do their own thing.
Cooper Roberts
Workers are entitled to literally every single iota of value that they produce. Any attempt to circumvent this is just Capitalist apologism at best, and at worst it is class apologism. There is no situation where it makes any sense for people to gain value for literally no work. You fundamentally misunderstand what Capitalism is if you think it is possible to pay someone for their value and to also have exploitation/Capitalism. It is also particularly gruesome that you seem to think wages represent produced value…
Julian Watson
Seriously, could you provide some sources for this? I've seen very little evidence that any of this is true.
