How do you know you need to recall elections if the system is opaque? how do you recall elections if those who even suggest that’s needed are silenced via dirty means? How do you ensure alternatives cannot be pushed down by the ruling government? In a system where reputation is placed as the most important thing, how do you ensure that reputation is fair and the ruling party is not manipulating the information in order to mudden the opposition’s reputation and strengthen their own?
Don’t you think there are rules / safeguards that need to be placed to make sure that can work at all?
Also: do you think any of this (including the election bit) is incompatible with my proposal? why?
Historically, fascists have not been that popular
The objective fact is that they have had enough popularity, multiple times, to actually win elections.
So, again: is popularity PROOF of good will? … or is it (like you previosly admitted before, despite being defensive about it) only an “indication”?
Because there are all sort of things that it could be an indication of. Not just good will, it could also be an indication that censorship and social pressure of a party of powerful people that don’t act in good will does work at keeping up a good reputation for a big enough section of the population.
That doesn’t really make much sense to me, it isn’t about banning private property but publicly owning and collectivizing all property
Does that mean that you agree with me that doing it would not fix the problem?
There would be no real mechanisms for aquiring private property or outcompeting the rest of society
I feel you are just playing with words. Would you be banning “the establishment of State-driven mechanisms of acquiring private property”? or would you be actually allowing the State to put rules to allow/enforce those mechanisms?
Do I need to start saying “State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property” instead of “private ownership” from now on to satisfy the way you wanna use the term?
Moreover, it isn’t a utopia, there will be problems and issues that people have to work through.
Yea, that was my point, it’s the problems and issues are what needs to be addressed to make it “a utopia”.
Recall elections.
Ah, so you don’t think the separation of power is useful if there already are elections? Because that’s what point 2 was… either you are not addressing it, or you legitimately think elections make it so that separation is not useful.
Note that in my ideal state, after a private owner is destituted, I would not see a problem with calling for elections on who should be the next owner. Again, this is not something that is incompatible with “State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property”.
The thing is, the question you have been asking over and over is vague. “Fairness” means a million different things, “exploitation” means a million different things. You were never specific until this comment.
Yes, because it’s something that touches on morality, it is difficult to determine, just the same as how it’s difficult to determine that “good” means.
But you did not put this term into question before. It’s the first time you asked, even though you used the term as well. What do you think counts as fairness for you?
Specifically, the kind of “Fairness” you used in this comment, what did you mean there?
“Capitalism is categorized by a Mode of Production where Private Ownership and Markets are primary, Socialism is categorized by Public Ownership and planning being primary, and Communism specifically is a Mode of Production where all property has been collectivized globally, and Class therefore erased, with the State alongside it, leaving a world republic. It isn’t a “one drop” rule or about which is more common, but which is primary. Fairness is indeed not the determining characteristic.”
You said here that fairness is not the “determining characteristic” of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. What kind of fairness were you thinking here?
In my case, what I was referring to is following rules that are designed for the benefit of the people.
In retrospect, after seeing what you meant by “primary”, I’m really wondering what did you mean, since later you told me that the State not working for the people was, for you, a determining characteristic of Capitalism… so I’m expecting you have a different definition of “fairness”, otherwise there would seem there’s a contradiction.
Communists speculate on what a future society may look like, but focus on the present systems and present trajectories. […]
You did not answer the question:
“Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you don’t even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?”
Do focus on the present trajectory, please… you cannot set a proper trajectory if your plan leads to the wrong target.
The biggest issue with your attitude in discussion here is an absolute heap of pre-existing notions and assumptions that don’t align with reality. Like, you say “in a system where reputation is the most important thing” but that’s not evident.
Fascists have historically taken power not through elections, but through seizure of power.
Moreover, I listed many things Xi has done, like healthcare improvements and poverty reductions. You haven’t proven any of your claims that he is a secret evil dude, this is becoming silly. You’d rather not employ Occam’s Razor and instead rely on conspiracy theories.
I can’t say I agree with you, no, because I have no idea what you’re talking about. You keep vaguely gesturing and speaking of hypotheticals that are contradictory or don’t make sense to me.
There is no reason to have Private Ownership in your hypothetical “social democracy on steroids.” There is no benefit, nor a reason for the position to exist. There isn’t a Private “owner” of the USPS, and yet it functions well. I don’t know why you think you need private ownership.
When I say “fairness” isn’t a determining characteristic, I mean that it doesn’t matter from a point of definition. I don’t care about “moral justifications,” I am not trying to hand-paint an ideal society. The ones who did so in the past, the Owenites, Saint-Simone, etc all failed because such an approach has no connection to material reality.
Modes of Production have trajectories, Feudalism created the conditions for Capitalism, which creates the conditions for Socialism, which creates the conditions for Communism. There isn’t a reasonable alternative to that general path not because of morality, but because of the progression of industry and production requiring more centralization as time goes on.
Why don’t you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why it’s a good thing, and why it will come to be.
The feeling is mutual actually, to me it looks like it’s you the one with pre-existing notions and assumptions about private ownership.
I’ll try to keep it short, so I won’t respond to most of your text (after all, I fell you also didn’t really respond to most of my questions), and I’ll just take on your last suggestion:
Why don’t you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why it’s a good thing, and why it will come to be.
Sure, but the Utopia I was presenting depends on your hypothetical Communist society, since the whole point was to test whether that one could work while preserving private ownership (as I already stated before).
The Utopic society I’m proposing is equivalent to yours, with a main change:
There will be people who are designated as owners of the means of production. And what this means is that they will be held responsible for any malpractice associated to the use of the production. So they will have the responsibility of overseeing it and organizing the distribution tasks needed following the rules mandated by State and Workers, and they will be, at the same time, overseed by a system of control that is fully transparent and for which the people can openly monitor every single action that is taken by the owner. I have some ideas on how this could work… like making it technically impossible for transactions to be valid without keeping records of them in a publicly held database that is distributed (P2P, maybe blockchain). This P2P community held database will be the sole authority in determining who should receive what, and it will be publicly auditable by every single citizen, them being able to openly keep a copy of it and inspect them for any possible violation of the rules established by the State/Workers.
The “ownership” carries responsibility, and the owner cannot act upon the owned property (or upon the way they distribute its output) without approval of the people. If there’s reason to suspect they acted without the interest of the people, the title of ownership will be seized and provided to someone else (and the method could perfectly be electoral votes).
I don’t mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you don’t actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. There’s no M-C-M’ circuit in place, there’s no competition, and there’s no ownership. You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didn’t actually answer my questions, I’ll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
What is my approach?
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
What will my “utopia” look like?
Marxists aren’t Utopian. We don’t think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You don’t design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Why is this a good thing?
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the World’s largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the world’s largest elimination in poverty in history.
Why will Communism come to be?
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We can’t know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalism’s centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We can’t predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze “unresolved problems” and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We don’t work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.
You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
There’s a reason: you do need someone to take charge of management tasks and redistribution. Your argument would be like saying that there’s no reason to elect public officials, nor for the workers to allow them to take the roles they take and “accumulate profits” (they would only accumulate the profits that the State/Workers allow, btw, because the redistribution includes them, and it has to also be overseed / agreed by State/Workers).
You can call the owners “administrators” if you want… but that’s more of a semantic problem. Because at the end of the day, it’s not the document of ownership what really matters. I would not mind if you call me “administrator” of my building if it were the case that even though I have a paper that says I’m own it, I’m were to not be allowed to execute changes to it without the agreement of the rest of the people living on it.
And yes, it might be that there’s no competition (although that does not necessarily have to be true), but this is why I was telling you that the problem is NOT that capitalism evolves into a monopoly, the problem is making sure the owner has specific obligations and responsibilities that must be always aligned with State/Worker.
Again, I wanna keep things short so I don’t want to go one by one through your points just yet, because the comments are becoming long enough as they are, and I feel most (all?) of what you wrote is not in conflict with my point and it only relates to superfluous misinterpretations of what I was meaning to communicate. I don’t want to engage in double guesses trying to understand what you think that I think and why you think the point you are making challenges mine.
You can have administrators that don’t own the industry. Managers and administrators are not owners. CEOs, for example, frequently don’t have ownership and instead ownership is handled by investors even within Capitalism. The purpose of individual ownership is profit. What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Other than the idea of individuals being independent from the state (separation of power), it doesn’t add anything and it doesn’t remove anything.
This is exactly my point. We do not gain anything from taking away private ownership in a situation in which the real control / power is in the State / Workers and the owners are just independent individuals at the service of the State/Workers.
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Which statement I made is specifically challenged by this?
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
In my proposed State, they would not necessarily need to (ie. they could delegate to a manager that does that job), but the responsibility towards the State/Workers in relation to the use of the facility would still be with the owner. So if the State/Workers are not happy about this arrangement for whatever reason (maybe they think the distribution of services is not being held with the benefit of the State/Workers in mind, or don’t think it’s fair for the owner to not take action himself), they can vote him out and elect a different one.
Individuals being separate from government isn’t a “sepparation of power.” It’s shifting power from the workers to the hands of the owners. If you’re playing a purely semantical game, then no, an owner without any ownership is not an owner.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The Workers is not a power, it’s a community.
What I’m talking is an executive power, one that needs to be overseen by other entities and that has to abide by regulations. I feel the more independent from the ones setting those regulations and from those who are judging the execution of those rules, the least chances of corruption.
Do you believe in division of power?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
What rules? where’s the quote? I still don’t understand what you think that I’m thinking.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
Having an eyepatch does make a functional difference though, it obstructs vision.
A better example to your point would be a society decides they want it to be spelt “color” (vs “colour”, lets assume that really makes no functional difference)… then a bunch of people show up and argue that the spelling of “color” is the cause of problems so they want to make it so it’s spelt “colour” instead… and just on the side maybe try and fix problems that they think were caused by the spelling… even though the measures to fix them can also be done with the same spelling in place.
My position is that the spelling of the word is not relevant… what’s relevant is the measures that should be taken to fix the problems, which would continue to happen if the only thing you change is the spelling of the word.
How do you know you need to recall elections if the system is opaque? how do you recall elections if those who even suggest that’s needed are silenced via dirty means? How do you ensure alternatives cannot be pushed down by the ruling government? In a system where reputation is placed as the most important thing, how do you ensure that reputation is fair and the ruling party is not manipulating the information in order to mudden the opposition’s reputation and strengthen their own?
Don’t you think there are rules / safeguards that need to be placed to make sure that can work at all?
Also: do you think any of this (including the election bit) is incompatible with my proposal? why?
The objective fact is that they have had enough popularity, multiple times, to actually win elections.
So, again: is popularity PROOF of good will? … or is it (like you previosly admitted before, despite being defensive about it) only an “indication”?
Because there are all sort of things that it could be an indication of. Not just good will, it could also be an indication that censorship and social pressure of a party of powerful people that don’t act in good will does work at keeping up a good reputation for a big enough section of the population.
Does that mean that you agree with me that doing it would not fix the problem?
I feel you are just playing with words. Would you be banning “the establishment of State-driven mechanisms of acquiring private property”? or would you be actually allowing the State to put rules to allow/enforce those mechanisms?
Do I need to start saying “State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property” instead of “private ownership” from now on to satisfy the way you wanna use the term?
Yea, that was my point, it’s the problems and issues are what needs to be addressed to make it “a utopia”.
Ah, so you don’t think the separation of power is useful if there already are elections? Because that’s what point 2 was… either you are not addressing it, or you legitimately think elections make it so that separation is not useful.
Note that in my ideal state, after a private owner is destituted, I would not see a problem with calling for elections on who should be the next owner. Again, this is not something that is incompatible with “State-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private property”.
Yes, because it’s something that touches on morality, it is difficult to determine, just the same as how it’s difficult to determine that “good” means.
But you did not put this term into question before. It’s the first time you asked, even though you used the term as well. What do you think counts as fairness for you?
Specifically, the kind of “Fairness” you used in this comment, what did you mean there?
“Capitalism is categorized by a Mode of Production where Private Ownership and Markets are primary, Socialism is categorized by Public Ownership and planning being primary, and Communism specifically is a Mode of Production where all property has been collectivized globally, and Class therefore erased, with the State alongside it, leaving a world republic. It isn’t a “one drop” rule or about which is more common, but which is primary. Fairness is indeed not the determining characteristic.”
You said here that fairness is not the “determining characteristic” of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. What kind of fairness were you thinking here?
In my case, what I was referring to is following rules that are designed for the benefit of the people.
In retrospect, after seeing what you meant by “primary”, I’m really wondering what did you mean, since later you told me that the State not working for the people was, for you, a determining characteristic of Capitalism… so I’m expecting you have a different definition of “fairness”, otherwise there would seem there’s a contradiction.
You did not answer the question:
“Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you don’t even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?”
Do focus on the present trajectory, please… you cannot set a proper trajectory if your plan leads to the wrong target.
The biggest issue with your attitude in discussion here is an absolute heap of pre-existing notions and assumptions that don’t align with reality. Like, you say “in a system where reputation is the most important thing” but that’s not evident.
Fascists have historically taken power not through elections, but through seizure of power.
Moreover, I listed many things Xi has done, like healthcare improvements and poverty reductions. You haven’t proven any of your claims that he is a secret evil dude, this is becoming silly. You’d rather not employ Occam’s Razor and instead rely on conspiracy theories.
While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for granted. Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being.
Straight from a western poll.
I can’t say I agree with you, no, because I have no idea what you’re talking about. You keep vaguely gesturing and speaking of hypotheticals that are contradictory or don’t make sense to me.
There is no reason to have Private Ownership in your hypothetical “social democracy on steroids.” There is no benefit, nor a reason for the position to exist. There isn’t a Private “owner” of the USPS, and yet it functions well. I don’t know why you think you need private ownership.
When I say “fairness” isn’t a determining characteristic, I mean that it doesn’t matter from a point of definition. I don’t care about “moral justifications,” I am not trying to hand-paint an ideal society. The ones who did so in the past, the Owenites, Saint-Simone, etc all failed because such an approach has no connection to material reality.
Modes of Production have trajectories, Feudalism created the conditions for Capitalism, which creates the conditions for Socialism, which creates the conditions for Communism. There isn’t a reasonable alternative to that general path not because of morality, but because of the progression of industry and production requiring more centralization as time goes on.
Why don’t you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why it’s a good thing, and why it will come to be.
The feeling is mutual actually, to me it looks like it’s you the one with pre-existing notions and assumptions about private ownership.
I’ll try to keep it short, so I won’t respond to most of your text (after all, I fell you also didn’t really respond to most of my questions), and I’ll just take on your last suggestion:
Sure, but the Utopia I was presenting depends on your hypothetical Communist society, since the whole point was to test whether that one could work while preserving private ownership (as I already stated before).
The Utopic society I’m proposing is equivalent to yours, with a main change:
There will be people who are designated as owners of the means of production. And what this means is that they will be held responsible for any malpractice associated to the use of the production. So they will have the responsibility of overseeing it and organizing the distribution tasks needed following the rules mandated by State and Workers, and they will be, at the same time, overseed by a system of control that is fully transparent and for which the people can openly monitor every single action that is taken by the owner. I have some ideas on how this could work… like making it technically impossible for transactions to be valid without keeping records of them in a publicly held database that is distributed (P2P, maybe blockchain). This P2P community held database will be the sole authority in determining who should receive what, and it will be publicly auditable by every single citizen, them being able to openly keep a copy of it and inspect them for any possible violation of the rules established by the State/Workers.
The “ownership” carries responsibility, and the owner cannot act upon the owned property (or upon the way they distribute its output) without approval of the people. If there’s reason to suspect they acted without the interest of the people, the title of ownership will be seized and provided to someone else (and the method could perfectly be electoral votes).
I don’t mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you don’t actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. There’s no M-C-M’ circuit in place, there’s no competition, and there’s no ownership. You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didn’t actually answer my questions, I’ll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
Marxists aren’t Utopian. We don’t think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You don’t design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the World’s largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the world’s largest elimination in poverty in history.
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We can’t know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalism’s centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We can’t predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze “unresolved problems” and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We don’t work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.
There’s a reason: you do need someone to take charge of management tasks and redistribution. Your argument would be like saying that there’s no reason to elect public officials, nor for the workers to allow them to take the roles they take and “accumulate profits” (they would only accumulate the profits that the State/Workers allow, btw, because the redistribution includes them, and it has to also be overseed / agreed by State/Workers).
You can call the owners “administrators” if you want… but that’s more of a semantic problem. Because at the end of the day, it’s not the document of ownership what really matters. I would not mind if you call me “administrator” of my building if it were the case that even though I have a paper that says I’m own it, I’m were to not be allowed to execute changes to it without the agreement of the rest of the people living on it.
And yes, it might be that there’s no competition (although that does not necessarily have to be true), but this is why I was telling you that the problem is NOT that capitalism evolves into a monopoly, the problem is making sure the owner has specific obligations and responsibilities that must be always aligned with State/Worker.
Again, I wanna keep things short so I don’t want to go one by one through your points just yet, because the comments are becoming long enough as they are, and I feel most (all?) of what you wrote is not in conflict with my point and it only relates to superfluous misinterpretations of what I was meaning to communicate. I don’t want to engage in double guesses trying to understand what you think that I think and why you think the point you are making challenges mine.
You can have administrators that don’t own the industry. Managers and administrators are not owners. CEOs, for example, frequently don’t have ownership and instead ownership is handled by investors even within Capitalism. The purpose of individual ownership is profit. What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
Other than the idea of individuals being independent from the state (separation of power), it doesn’t add anything and it doesn’t remove anything.
This is exactly my point. We do not gain anything from taking away private ownership in a situation in which the real control / power is in the State / Workers and the owners are just independent individuals at the service of the State/Workers.
Which statement I made is specifically challenged by this?
In my proposed State, they would not necessarily need to (ie. they could delegate to a manager that does that job), but the responsibility towards the State/Workers in relation to the use of the facility would still be with the owner. So if the State/Workers are not happy about this arrangement for whatever reason (maybe they think the distribution of services is not being held with the benefit of the State/Workers in mind, or don’t think it’s fair for the owner to not take action himself), they can vote him out and elect a different one.
Individuals being separate from government isn’t a “sepparation of power.” It’s shifting power from the workers to the hands of the owners. If you’re playing a purely semantical game, then no, an owner without any ownership is not an owner.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
The Workers is not a power, it’s a community.
What I’m talking is an executive power, one that needs to be overseen by other entities and that has to abide by regulations. I feel the more independent from the ones setting those regulations and from those who are judging the execution of those rules, the least chances of corruption.
Do you believe in division of power?
What rules? where’s the quote? I still don’t understand what you think that I’m thinking.
Having an eyepatch does make a functional difference though, it obstructs vision.
A better example to your point would be a society decides they want it to be spelt “color” (vs “colour”, lets assume that really makes no functional difference)… then a bunch of people show up and argue that the spelling of “color” is the cause of problems so they want to make it so it’s spelt “colour” instead… and just on the side maybe try and fix problems that they think were caused by the spelling… even though the measures to fix them can also be done with the same spelling in place.
My position is that the spelling of the word is not relevant… what’s relevant is the measures that should be taken to fix the problems, which would continue to happen if the only thing you change is the spelling of the word.