Taylor J. Christensen, M.D. @DoctorTaylorJay

@elonmusk So which is better? Closed borders and welfare OR open borders and no welfare

Taylor J. Christensen, M.D. @DoctorTaylorJay

2 months ago

A welfare state available to all (including illegal immigrants) plus open borders is obviously a bad idea because of the incentive it creates for people from everywhere to come milk the system. But which is better: 1. Closed borders and a welfare state 2. Open borders and no

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@LPNational @justinamash He doesn't quite capture the differences between the pernicious socialism, interventionism, and cronyism. But otherwise it seems directionally correct.

@LibertyCappy Tariffs are hurting Americans, war not going well and wasting billions, insufficient deregulation, government spending continues to be crazy. It's like it doesn't matter who you vote for because the Establishment is mostly in charge.

How is China's economy keeping up with the USA's if it is socialist? Doesn't socialism lead to poverty and capitalism lead to abundance? Here's my answer: To understand socialism, you need to understand what the "means of production" are. To understand capitalism, you need to understand what "capital" is. They're the same thing. Think of wealth as basically every physical thing that is useful. Houses, cars, food, machines, money, animals, minerals, etc. Wealth can be spent, saved, or invested. When wealth is invested, that means it's being put into a business that exists to generate more wealth. All of that invested wealth IS CAPITAL. The means of production is all of the wealth invested into businesses. So it's capital too. They're the same thing. This is why the fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism is who owns that invested wealth. If it is individuals ("capitalists"), it's capitalism. If it is socially owned (like by the government or worker cooperatives), it's socialism. They are mutually exclusive from a unit of wealth standpoint. In other words, a single unit of wealth (like a US dollar) invested in a business can either be owned by an individual person or a social entity. But there can be parts of a single economy that are capitalistic and parts that are socialistic. The percent of all capital in an economy owned by the government (or other government-approved social entities) tells you what percent of the economy is socialism. Countries don't exactly publish data in this way, but here is Grok's best estimate of the percent socialism each of the following economies is: Hong Kong: 5% USA: 8% Canada: 13% Sweden: 15% China: 33% Russia: 45% Venezuela: 50% Cuba: 85% North Korea: 95% But there's a big confounder here because the amount of control governments exert over an economy isn't just measured by its ownership percentage but by how much it intervenes in the rest of the economy via monetary policy and regulations (it's called "interventionism"). And then corruption and other forms of non-governmental control over industries is another important confounder. The USA is 25% lower than China from a strict government ownership perspective. But I wonder how much those confounders--especially interventionism--narrow that gap. It's probably not insignificant. So China may be much more authoritarian than the USA from an individual liberties standpoint, but it's not THAT much more socialist from an economic standpoint. I believe this answers the question about why China is keeping up with the USA in spite of it supposedly being socialist. In short, it's because China is not that much more socialist than the USA.

@JohnWSCarpente1 @XFreeze Great point--you need a cultural willingness to accept the nation's constitution as written. A stable government system always has cultural rails that bolster it. I'll definitely check out The Expanse.

@EmbitteredThe @Dale_Stafford Yep, the classic straw man about socialism. I try to avoid assuming others have bad intentions when they commit that fallacy, but it doesn't change the fact that they're committing a logical fallacy, which should be exposed.

@bubafett @XFreeze The U.S. constitution was an amazing achievement for its time. But it has failed in significant ways. We can do better the next time around. And it baffles me that more people aren't talking about how in preparation for what's to come in the next couple decades.

Add to that the plutocracy (crony capitalism) that develops as a result of individuals buying more power in the system with their disproportionate wealth (which results in further exacerbations of unequal distribution of wealth), and now the unfairness reflex is even more triggered. Apparently not even equality under the law can survive the capitalism-induced wealth disparity.

The biggest challenge that capitalism presents to humanity is its ability to generate massive wealth that gets distributed unevenly. That uneven wealth distribution triggers our genetically programmed fairness reflex. It wouldn't be so bad if we could point to an individual's level of effort to easily explain the wealth disparity. But when something as simple as one having enough excess wealth that they can invest it and, with minimal subsequent effort, earn more money in a year than a labourer's 60+ hours of backbreaking work per week, that triggers our unfairness reflex even more. This will be a problem until we achieve a society of abundance. Socialism is, at its core, an attempt to eliminate that unfairness, which is a reasonable starting place. The challenge--which I believe socialism cannot solve--is to figure out how to adequately address the unfairness reflex that capitalism triggers without eliminating capitalism's wealth-increasing effect, which is the main thing pushing us toward our ultimate goal of abundance.

@AwildHeraZee @XFreeze I have not! I'll have to check it out. Thanks

One of the fundamental challenges of any economic system is to find a way to rationally distribute economic goods (which are, by definition, scarce). Ownership is one way to do this. When someone owns something, they will only part with it if they receive something more valuable to them in exchange. If everything in an economy is owned--including the new economic goods being produced--and free trade is allowed, economic goods find their way to the highest valued uses. That's efficient. It also creates an incentive to produce highly valued economic goods because people will give you more wealth in exchange for them. That creates an incentive for innovations that improve human satisfaction. So ownership plus free trade result in efficient use of economic goods in the static world and new economic goods that further improve human satisfaction in the dynamic world. The alternative to ownership is distribution of economic goods by fiat. Distribution by fiat means someone who has the power of force on their side (let's say it's a government) simply assigns an amount of each economic good to the individuals in society according to the government's definition of fair. And they do this with newly created economic goods as well. The system could allow trade after the fact, or it could prohibit it. If trade is prohibited, no prices could arise and nobody--including the government--would be able to easily compare the value of things. An economic system without prices is always a disaster. If trade is allowed, at least economic goods would find their way to the highest valued uses. But there would be no incentive for anyone to work any harder than they are forced to work. And nobody would work their butt off to create new and more highly valued economic goods. Because their share of the additional output they generate would be miniscule. And nobody wants to incur the disutility of labour on themselves for essentially zero benefit. (If they are intrinsically fulfilled by working more, then obviously they will be willing to do that without receiving any other form of compensation.) Ownership and trade seems much better than distribution by fiat. Whether that distribution by fiat occurs through government takeover of all businesses or whether it comes afterward through aggressive wealth redistribution, it's not a way to help us progress toward abundance.

The US citizens there would technically be under US law, but US courts don't have jurisdiction over Martian land. And then there's the pragmatic difficulty of enforcing US laws so far away even if they overcame that barrier. Ultimately it would be the wild West without any perfectly clear government oversight.

@GadSaad Walking is great for the mind, to give you space to work through things. Higher-intensity exercise is much better for the body because of the stronger physiologic stimulus it provides, and it induces a much greater release of BDNF (neuroplasticity hormone) as well.

@thatsKAIZEN This framework would make your explanation much easier: clearthinkingonhealthcare.com/2019/10/22/a-f… Most of the confusions about the different government systems come down to not understanding these different spectra.

@LeConneatois @Rothmus Such a great distinction and observation.

Why consumption as an economic goal is stupid, explained in 6 points. Preface: I get it--when people buy things, businesses make money and hire people. It all seems so obvious. Until you realize that it's a huge oversimplification. So here's my explanation of why it's wrong: 1. People can only do three things with their money: spend it, save it, or invest it. 2. Pushing people to spend more means they are saving less and/or investing less. 3. Saving less means, on average, a higher risk of default when people lose their job or have some other financial challenge. This is bad for them and for the economy. 4. Investing less is even worse. The thing that drives the economy forward is money invested. Because the businesses that are created with that invested money are pushing to find a higher-value way to deliver on the demands of consumers, which often leads to innovations that improve value (either by raising quality, lowering price, or both). 5. So if we want the economy to progress, we need to push investment over consumption. And, as for saving, everyone should have an adequate emergency fund regardless of what they do with the rest of their money. 6. Prioritizing investment over consumption means people will spend less money. But the money they do spend will still be rewarding the highest-value offerings in each industry, which preserves the incentive for businesses to find ways to deliver higher and higher value. In short: Any policy that increases consumption--either on an individual level or on a government level--and decreases investment will harm economic progression. And economic progression toward a society of abundance is, I believe, everyone's goal. I know caring for the indigent is another worthwhile goal. You just have to be aware that every bit of additional funds going to that goal slows our progression toward permanently eliminating poverty.

We have the free market to thank for shifting international relations from conquest to trade. Conquest is negative sum because of all the wealth and humans destroyed. But rulers still chose conquest based on the faulty assumption that the best way to enrich and strengthen a nation was to subjugate other nations and take their wealth. So, the overall pie gets smaller, but your nation has a larger share of it, which may end up being more wealth than before. Plus your enemies are weaker. Over time, the civilizations that instead relied on voluntary trade based on the free market became wealthier and stronger. Because trade is positive sum. So even if your slice of the pie is the same percentage of the total, the overall pie has gotten larger, so your wealth has increased a lot more than of you had relied on conquest. This explains the shift over the course of human history from conquest to trade. Thanks, free market, for preventing so many wars! Image credit: arXiv:1812.08071v4

Yes, actually I hadn't thought of worker cooperatives like this until you brought this idea up. There are worker cooperatives that have successfully existed and still do exist, including in the US. The workers own all of the shares and distribute profits equitably. Basically an employer-based version of socialism. Or maybe socialism lite. These worker cooperatives have been marginal in their effect on the economy at large, primarily because, as they grow, the buy-in cost increases for new workers to join. And also they don't like taking outside capital, at least not in exchange for ownership (because that's contrary to the whole point), so their access to capital is lower than typical companies without these ideal-imposed limitations. Also, the workers tend to distribute the profits rather than reinvest them, so they end up not growing or staying competitive because they can't make big investments into the changes the market demands.

I think there are three aspects of socialism that are not usually considered separately but that need to be disentanged if you want to evaluate the various incarnations of socialism accurately. 1. Social ownership over the means of production (and, thus, social ownership over the profits/losses derived therefrom). This ownership can be by workers of the specific firm, workers within the industry at large, or it can simply be ownership by the government. And each of those has various options for how to allocate the profits--do you distribute the profits from a firm to the workers according to how many hours they put in, or according to how much their individual effort contributed to the overall outcome? Or do you distribute the profits of an entire industry to the entire worker corps of that industry? And what about losses? Do the workers have to bear those losses? Or do the losses get spread out over all members of the society? And how does all of this affect the incentives for entrepreneurs to form new businesses and the allocation of capital to enable those new businesses? 2. Central planning. The authority to make decisions about how to run a business is always vested in the owner(s), although there are often government-imposed and capital-shortage-imposed limitations on the range of decisions that they can make. The owner(s) can also delegate much of the decision making to others (such as a CEO that has been hired to improve the profitability of the business). But when the ownership of businesses changes to the workers or the government, who gets to decide how to run the business? A central planner? The workers collectively? Or do they delegate the decision to an elected CEO to avoid central planning altogether? Hayek definitively showed that central planning is horribly ineffective, so more modern versions of socialism have found ways to avoid it while still achieving the main purposes of socialism. 3. Wealth redistribution. This doesn't pertain to the individual business directly but rather to the general socialist ideal that wealth inequality is undesirable in a society, and that seems the be the primary motivator of the first point above, which creates a need to address the second point. This equalization could be simply done among the workers in a specific firm or industry, or it could be nationwide equalization. And the factors considered to determine what each household is due could include only the number of members of the household, or it could include a bunch of other things like age, working status, party affiliation, etc. Even if you succeed at enacting a one-time wealth tax to redistribute wealth among the members of a society, you have to solve the problem of unequal incomes leading again to wealth disparities. This implies higher-profit industries and firms will need to have some of those profits allocated to others. If one can demonstrate that each individual component of socialism is worse than capitalism at achieving what I believe is the shared goal of both systems (economic progress toward abundance), then any conformation of socialism can be dismantled. If not, then we should carefully consider as a reasonable alternative to capitalism any form of socialism that only integrates the effective components.