However neither kibbutzim nor Mondragon are rapidly growing and taking over the world.
I see no reason why an optimal system for achieving the human good in the realm of economics must necessarily conquer and destroy its competitors or, as you put it, “take over the world”. In fact, the popular distaste for imperialism rather strongly tells me quite the opposite!
“Capitalism paper-clips more than the alternatives” is not a claim in favor of capitalism.
I don’t think any of that is true
Ok? Can we nail this down to a dispute over specific facts and have one of us update on evidence, or do you want to keep this in the realm of narrative?
Can you run coops and anarcho-syndicalist communes in contemporary Western societies? Of course you can! The same way you can run religious cults and new age retreats and whatnot. Some people like them and will join them. Some. Very few.
Have you considered that in most states within the USA, you cannot actually charter a cooperative? There’s simply no statute for it.
In those states and countries where cooperatives can be chartered, they’re a successful if not rabidly spreading form of business, and many popular brands are actually, when you check their incorporation papers, cooperatives. More so in Europe.
Actually, there’s been some small bit of evidence that cooperatives thrive more than “ordinary” companies in a financial crisis (no studies have been done about “all the time”, so to speak), because their structure keeps them more detached and less fragile with respect to the financial markets.
I strongly disagree. I think there are basic-values considerations as well as “this doesn’t do what you think it does” considerations.
Then I think you should state the basic values you’re serving, and argue (very hard, since this is quite the leap you’ve taken!) that “taking over the world” is a desirable instrumental property for an economic system, orthogonally to its ability to cater to our full set of actual desires and values.
Be warned that, to me, it looks as if you’re arguing in favor of Clippy-ness being a virtue.
There’s an argument that you should have the greatest variety of structures and institutions possible to give yourself Talebian robustness....to prevent everything failing at the same time for the same reasons.
I see no reason why an optimal system for achieving the human good in the realm of economics must necessarily conquer and destroy its competitors or, as you put it, “take over the world”.
Because, in the long term, there can be only one. If your “optimal system” does not produce as much growth/value/output as the competition, the competition will grow relatively stronger (exponentially, too) every day. Eventually your “optimal system” will be taken over, by force or by money, or just driven into irrelevance.
Look at, say, religious communities like the Amish. The can continue to exist as isolated pockets as long as they are harmless. But they have no future.
or do you want to keep this in the realm of narrative?
This seems to be a 10,000-feet-level discussion, so I think we can just note our disagreement without getting bogged down in historical minutae.
in most states within the USA, you cannot actually charter a cooperative?
Any particular reason why you can’t set it up as a partnership or a corporation with a specific corporate charter?
Besides, I don’t think your claim is true. Credit unions are very widespread and they’re basically coops. There are mutual savings banks and mutual insurance companies which are, again, basically coops.
Then I think you should state the basic values you’re serving,
That line of argument doesn’t have anything to do with taking over the world. It is focused on trade-offs between values (specifically, that in chasing economic equality you’re making bad trade-offs, of course that depends on what your values are) and on a claim that you’re mistaken about the consequences of establishing particular socioeconomic systems.
Note that systems aren’t competing to produce $$$, they are competing to produce QoL. Europeans are happy to live in countries an inch away from bankruptcy because they get free healthcare and rich cultural heritage and llow crime....
Note also that societies use each others products and services, and the natural global ecosystem might have niches for herbivores as well as carnivores.
Note that systems aren’t competing to produce $$$, they are competing to produce QoL.
That depends on your analysis framework. If you’re thinking about voluntary migrations, quality of life matters a lot. But if you’re thinking of scenarios like “We’ll just buy everything of worth in this country”, for example, $$$ matter much more. And, of course, if the push comes to shove and the miltiary gets involved...
the natural global ecosystem might have niches for herbivores as well as carnivores.
That’s a good point. But every player in an ecosystem must produce some value in order not to die out.
It’s not that accurate to describe Europeans “conquering” the Americas, more like moving in after the smallpox did most of the dirty work then mopping up the remainder. A better example is Africa, where it was unquestionably deliberate acts of aggression that saw nearly the whole continent subdued.
That too, but I think Americas are a better example because nowadays the mainstream media is full of bison excrement about how Native Americans led wise, serene, and peaceful lives in harmony with Nature until the stupid and greedy white man came and killed them all.
Maybe it’s a provincial thing. Europeans get the same or similar thing about our great-grandfathers’ treatment of Africans. Here in Britain we get both :/
For a counterexample, see WWII. Sure, overwhelming technological superiority is overwhelming. But that’s unlikely to happen again in a globalised world.
WWII was, to oversimplify, provoked by a coalition of states attempting regional domination; but their means of doing so were pretty far from the “outcompete everyone else” narrative upthread, and in fact you could view them as being successful in proportion to how closely they hewed to it. I know the Pacific theater best; there, we find Japan’s old-school imperialistic moves meeting little concerted opposition until they attacked Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Singapore, thus bringing the US and Britain’s directly administered eastern colonies into the war. Pearl Harbor usually gets touted as the start of the war on that front, but in fact Japan had been taking over swaths of Manchuria, Mongolia, and China (in roughly that order) since 1931, and not at all quietly. You’ve heard of the Rape of Nanking? That happened in 1937, before the Anschluss was more than a twinkle in Hitler’s eye.
If the Empire of Japan had been content to keep picking on less technologically and militarily capable nations, I doubt the Pacific War as such would ever have come to a head.
In the modern world, attempts at takeover produce concerted opposition, because the modern world has the techontological and practical mechanisms to concert opposition. There are plenty of examples of takeovers in theaancient world because no one could send the message,”we’ve been taken oher and you could be next”
There are plenty of examples of takeovers in theaancient world because no one could send the message,”we’ve been taken oher and you could be next”
Funny. I’ve just finished reading Herodotus’s Histories, the second half of which could be described as chronicling exactly that message and the response to it.
(There’s a bit more to it, of course. In summary, the Greek-speaking Ionic states of western Turkey rebelled against their Persian-appointed satraps, supported by Athens and its allies; after putting down the revolt, Persia’s emperor Darius elected to subjugate Athens and incidentally the rest of Aegean Greece in retaliation. Persia in a series of campaigns then conquered much of Greece before being stopped at Marathon; years later, Darius’s son Xerxes decided to go for Round 2 and met with much the same results.)
In the modern world, attempts at takeover produce concerted opposition
Remind me, who owns that peninsula in the Black Sea now..?
because no one could send the message,”we’ve been taken oher and you could be next”
I think you severely underestimate the communication capabilities of the ancient world. You also overestimate the willingness of people to die for somebody else far away.
But that’s unlikely to happen again in a globalised world.
I don’t see why not. Besides, in this context we’re not talking about world domination, we’re talking about assimilating backward societies and spreading to them the light of the technological progress :-D
I see no reason why an optimal system for achieving the human good in the realm of economics must necessarily conquer and destroy its competitors or, as you put it, “take over the world”. In fact, the popular distaste for imperialism rather strongly tells me quite the opposite!
“Capitalism paper-clips more than the alternatives” is not a claim in favor of capitalism.
Ok? Can we nail this down to a dispute over specific facts and have one of us update on evidence, or do you want to keep this in the realm of narrative?
Have you considered that in most states within the USA, you cannot actually charter a cooperative? There’s simply no statute for it.
In those states and countries where cooperatives can be chartered, they’re a successful if not rabidly spreading form of business, and many popular brands are actually, when you check their incorporation papers, cooperatives. More so in Europe.
Actually, there’s been some small bit of evidence that cooperatives thrive more than “ordinary” companies in a financial crisis (no studies have been done about “all the time”, so to speak), because their structure keeps them more detached and less fragile with respect to the financial markets.
Then I think you should state the basic values you’re serving, and argue (very hard, since this is quite the leap you’ve taken!) that “taking over the world” is a desirable instrumental property for an economic system, orthogonally to its ability to cater to our full set of actual desires and values.
Be warned that, to me, it looks as if you’re arguing in favor of Clippy-ness being a virtue.
There’s an argument that you should have the greatest variety of structures and institutions possible to give yourself Talebian robustness....to prevent everything failing at the same time for the same reasons.
Yes, there is. This certainly argues in favor of trying out additional institutional forms.
Because, in the long term, there can be only one. If your “optimal system” does not produce as much growth/value/output as the competition, the competition will grow relatively stronger (exponentially, too) every day. Eventually your “optimal system” will be taken over, by force or by money, or just driven into irrelevance.
Look at, say, religious communities like the Amish. The can continue to exist as isolated pockets as long as they are harmless. But they have no future.
This seems to be a 10,000-feet-level discussion, so I think we can just note our disagreement without getting bogged down in historical minutae.
Any particular reason why you can’t set it up as a partnership or a corporation with a specific corporate charter?
Besides, I don’t think your claim is true. Credit unions are very widespread and they’re basically coops. There are mutual savings banks and mutual insurance companies which are, again, basically coops.
That line of argument doesn’t have anything to do with taking over the world. It is focused on trade-offs between values (specifically, that in chasing economic equality you’re making bad trade-offs, of course that depends on what your values are) and on a claim that you’re mistaken about the consequences of establishing particular socioeconomic systems.
Note that systems aren’t competing to produce $$$, they are competing to produce QoL. Europeans are happy to live in countries an inch away from bankruptcy because they get free healthcare and rich cultural heritage and llow crime....
Note also that societies use each others products and services, and the natural global ecosystem might have niches for herbivores as well as carnivores.
That depends on your analysis framework. If you’re thinking about voluntary migrations, quality of life matters a lot. But if you’re thinking of scenarios like “We’ll just buy everything of worth in this country”, for example, $$$ matter much more. And, of course, if the push comes to shove and the miltiary gets involved...
That’s a good point. But every player in an ecosystem must produce some value in order not to die out.
Attempts4 at byouts and world domination tend to produce concerted opposition
For a historical example consider what happened to the Americas when the Europeans arrived en masse.
It’s not that accurate to describe Europeans “conquering” the Americas, more like moving in after the smallpox did most of the dirty work then mopping up the remainder. A better example is Africa, where it was unquestionably deliberate acts of aggression that saw nearly the whole continent subdued.
Either way, it’s not relevant to the “best” politcal system taking over, because it’s about opportunity, force of numbers, technology, and, GERMS.
And genes.
If one genotype took over, that would be fragile. Like pandas . Diversity is robustness.
I dunno man, milk digestion worked out well for Indo-Europeans.
If by genes you mean smallpox and hepatitis resistance genes, yes.
That too, but I think Americas are a better example because nowadays the mainstream media is full of bison excrement about how Native Americans led wise, serene, and peaceful lives in harmony with Nature until the stupid and greedy white man came and killed them all.
Maybe it’s a provincial thing. Europeans get the same or similar thing about our great-grandfathers’ treatment of Africans. Here in Britain we get both :/
For a counterexample, see WWII. Sure, overwhelming technological superiority is overwhelming. But that’s unlikely to happen again in a globalised world.
WWII was, to oversimplify, provoked by a coalition of states attempting regional domination; but their means of doing so were pretty far from the “outcompete everyone else” narrative upthread, and in fact you could view them as being successful in proportion to how closely they hewed to it. I know the Pacific theater best; there, we find Japan’s old-school imperialistic moves meeting little concerted opposition until they attacked Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Singapore, thus bringing the US and Britain’s directly administered eastern colonies into the war. Pearl Harbor usually gets touted as the start of the war on that front, but in fact Japan had been taking over swaths of Manchuria, Mongolia, and China (in roughly that order) since 1931, and not at all quietly. You’ve heard of the Rape of Nanking? That happened in 1937, before the Anschluss was more than a twinkle in Hitler’s eye.
If the Empire of Japan had been content to keep picking on less technologically and militarily capable nations, I doubt the Pacific War as such would ever have come to a head.
In the modern world, attempts at takeover produce concerted opposition, because the modern world has the techontological and practical mechanisms to concert opposition. There are plenty of examples of takeovers in theaancient world because no one could send the message,”we’ve been taken oher and you could be next”
Funny. I’ve just finished reading Herodotus’s Histories, the second half of which could be described as chronicling exactly that message and the response to it.
(There’s a bit more to it, of course. In summary, the Greek-speaking Ionic states of western Turkey rebelled against their Persian-appointed satraps, supported by Athens and its allies; after putting down the revolt, Persia’s emperor Darius elected to subjugate Athens and incidentally the rest of Aegean Greece in retaliation. Persia in a series of campaigns then conquered much of Greece before being stopped at Marathon; years later, Darius’s son Xerxes decided to go for Round 2 and met with much the same results.)
And Genghis and Atilla ..
Remind me, who owns that peninsula in the Black Sea now..?
I think you severely underestimate the communication capabilities of the ancient world. You also overestimate the willingness of people to die for somebody else far away.
Remind me, who’s not in G8 anymore?
Brits fought in Borneo during WWII. Yout may be succumbeing to Typical Country Fallacy.
Remind me why anyone should care about the G8?
I don’t see why not. Besides, in this context we’re not talking about world domination, we’re talking about assimilating backward societies and spreading to them the light of the technological progress :-D
Do they see it that way? Did anyone ask them?
And why not is the fact that there are ways of telling what the other people are up to:its called espionage.