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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the Eiggemplary dept.

Al Jazeera:

In 1997, the inhabitants of the tiny Hebridean Isle of Eigg finally succeeded in taking collective control of their island. Tensions had been running high for years: everything from the islanders' homes to their jobs to their electricity supply depended on the whims of the wealthy businessman who owned it. Sick of putting up with crumbling buildings while he took rich friends for picnics and jaunts in his Rolls Royce, they launched what today would be called a crowdfunder, and eventually raised enough money to buy him out.

[...] Today, Eigg is thriving. A community housing association has refurbished the islanders' homes and made rents more affordable. The island is 95 percent powered by community-owned renewables, giving islanders 24-hour electricity for the first time. The landscape, previously scarred by damaging spruce tree plantations, has been restored. There is even a community-owned broadband network. Decisions about the island's future are made democratically by the trust that owns it on behalf of all who live there.

Can collective ownership work in the rest of the UK?


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:46AM (#1001231)

    Boomers forced everyone to stay home at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.

    Boomers forced every business to close at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.

    Boomers forced everyone to wear face masks at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.

    Boomers caused the worst economic depression in history to give Boomers a safe space.

    Whiny entitled Boomers are the worst generation ever to live.

    No longer.

    Boomers must be made to pay with their lives for crimes against civilization.

    The Final Solution to COVID-19 is to exterminate every Boomer.

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Kell on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:06AM (4 children)

    by Kell (292) on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:06AM (#1001237)

    B-but what about communisum!!!1one

    --
    Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:13AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:13AM (#1001238)

      Insoc is doubleplusgood for Airstrip One.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:28PM (#1001345)

        You all sound like fans of Emmanuel Goldstein. Off to room 101 with you!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:20PM (#1001505)

      It's working now but wait a few years, the child abuse stories will start to leak out. Inevitable.

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:04AM

      by driverless (4770) on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:04AM (#1002128)

      It's not communism, but close. Eigg is a tiny, isolated island with very little on it so you have to learn to get along with people you wouldn't normally give the time of day to, the evil businessman was a conservationist who got into disagreements with the locals, some of whom are... difficult to deal with, they then bought the place out and it's now run in a somewhat dysfunctional manner with ongoing squabbles over who gets what, see "the locals" above. It's not nearly the sit-down-and-sing-kumbayah paradise the story makes it out to be.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:14AM (#1001239)

    On an island
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel) [wikipedia.org]
    It works very well , people are relaxed and happy, until oil is discovered

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:51AM (#1001243)

    As long as the population is less than Dunbar's number and nobody ever moves in or out.

    Now you know why collectives are usually also cults.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:01AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:01AM (#1001245)

    In the COVID-19 economy the only businesses allowed to be open are grocery stores and pharmacies. Every other business is closed by Boomer decree as non-essential to Boomers. The grocery store employs armed guards to enforce social distancing to protect the Boomers. I tried to buy food at the grocery store but the grocery store gives preferential treatment to Boomers and there was no food left for me. The only place I am able to buy food is the pharmacy because Boomers use pharmacies strictly as dispensaries and leave the grocery section untouched. The pharmacy has a limited selection of food but I have managed to subsist on ramen and oatmeal which the Boomers do not buy.

    Sick of living on a tiny island by the whims of a wealthy businessman? Try living in the wide world by the whims of selfish pensioned Boomers who deliberately wrecked the entire world economy because their actions do not affect them personally. Try living in a world where Boomers will have you shot for stepping outside without a mask. Try living in a world where Boomers are implicitly exempt from their own mandatory mask orders because masks are just so uncomfortable on a Boomer chin. Try living in a world where you eat ramen and oatmeal while Boomers eat chicken and steak.

    Try living in a world of Boomers.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:17AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:17AM (#1001247)

      -nomsg

      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:21AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:21AM (#1001249)

        Get your KNEE off my NECK, Boomer.

        • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:49AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:49AM (#1001261)

          That's not my knee.

        • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by Magic Oddball on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:06AM

          by Magic Oddball (3847) on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:06AM (#1001295) Journal

          I think you meant "Xer" considering that cop is definitely nowhere near retirement age...

    • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:18AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:18AM (#1001248)

      OK Incel

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:25AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:25AM (#1001252)

        Fuck them all to death!

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:54PM

      by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:54PM (#1001375) Journal

      >be boomer
      >pay throughout life for your pension
      >get pension
      >millennial is salt

      OK MILLIE

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:32AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:32AM (#1001253)

    Sing me a song of a lad that is gone
    Say could that lad be I?
    Merry of soul he sailed on a day
    Over the sea to Skye.

    Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
    Eigg on the starboard bow;
    Glory of youth glowed in his soul;
    Where is that glory now?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:41AM (#1001256)

      SoylentNews is people

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      Michael David Crawford, age 55, died March 24, 2019, in Vancouver, WA. He was born in Spokane, WA, February 24, 1964, at the Deaconess Hospital to Patricia (Speelmon) and Charles Russell (Russ) Crawford. He joined his older sister Bonnie Jean.

      As his father was in the US Navy the family lived in various towns in California, including San Diego, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Concord and Nevada City and also in Formia, Italy, where his father was stationed on the USS Springfield, the US Navy’s 6th fleet flagship, which was anchored off Gaeta. He was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout. He attended schools in Nevada City, CA, Gaeta, Italy, Concord, Calif., Moscow, ID and graduated from Armijo High School, Fairfield, CA, June 1982 where he was a student leader and honor student. While in high school he was active in drama department of both Armijo and Fairfield High Schools as an actor and the designer/builder of sets. He attended the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, and graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Physics. His senior year at UCSC he spent several weeks doing his senior thesis at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:39AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:39AM (#1001255)

    Where the fuck is "Hebridean Isle of Eigg"? Out by Florida? Hawaii?

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:43AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:43AM (#1001257)
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:44AM (#1001258)

      Off the west coast of Scotland, you willfully ignorant fucker.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:48AM (#1001260)

      If it was up your ass you'd know where it was, wouldn't you?

      In your case, maybe not.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:39AM (#1001273)

      Hey, Ivan.

      I know US people aren't the brightest but you really make them sound like a bunch of ignorant hillbillies from the safety of your mom's basement in St Petersburg.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:27AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:27AM (#1001301)

      Where the fuck is "Hebridean Isle of Eigg"?

      Oh dear, we are dealing with a geographically challenged American! Where is Kansas City, you fuck face? But here is the best response from Miss Teen South Carolina, 2007 [youtube.com]. Classic. Blonde, Trump, beauty pageants, Sarah Palin [huffpost.com]. Do Republicans intentionally raise their women to be this stupid? Sorry, rhetorical question.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:22PM (#1001367)

        Half a nitpick. Republican women intentionally raise their daughters to be this stupid. It is only half a nitpick, because I mean they are complicit in patriarchy.

        Non-rhetorical question: what are you going to do about it?

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:52AM (10 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:52AM (#1001263)

    Population: 105

    In my experience, true active, aggressive assholes are rare - let's peg that at about 1/20. Passive assholes are much more common - put them at about 1/2. Mostly passive good people also about 1/2, and true active aggressive good people are even more rare at around 1/40 (yes, yes, that's more than 100%, shave down the 'about 1/2s' to fit.)

    So, it seems like this island of 105 was owned by an asshole, probably a passive one, and some active aggressive good people managed to turn things around - they were probably lucky and had a lower than typical representation of passive assholes who would have just let things slide along as they were because: why would they front any money to help anybody else?

    Unfortunately, in larger populations, you start to get full representation of all the groups, and this random roll of the dice doesn't happen - there are enough true active aggressive assholes in positions of power to continue to screw up everybody else's lives and they're not going to let anything dislodge them from their pretty perch where they can shit on the rest of the world.

    --
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    • (Score: 5, Informative) by istartedi on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:46AM (6 children)

      by istartedi (123) on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:46AM (#1001287) Journal

      OK, that explains it. Back in the 90s I took an interest in "intentional communities". I never joined one, but I studied them online. One of the conclusions to which a lot of people have come is that communities start to fragment around 150 or so. Others have pegged the number a bit higher, but I don't think anybody had it lower than 100 or higher than 1000. Some of the ICs have recognized this, and solved the problem by forming a new chapter when they get too big. The chapters will still relate, but they have separate leaders, locations, etc. and that prevents them from starting to have the problems that a typical town would have.

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      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:39AM (5 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:39AM (#1001318)

        I'll go ahead an name drop here: back in the 1990s Dean Kamen (about to become known as the Segway inventor, not the dead money guy) ran a rather successful tech development company which he intentionally kept at a headcount of 200, in his words: "because beyond 200 there's just no way to know everybody, and if everybody doesn't know everybody things start to fracture and you get a lot of inefficiency."

        Shortly after that, I went to work for a company that had just grown to the 500-1000 headcount range, and sure enough: silos were forming. While R&D and Manufacturing still "knew each other" and had to work together on a lot of things, there was no way for everybody to know everybody, and when that critical mass got passed the two communities started to focus on their individual local goals rather than company-wide goals. Some active-aggressive assholes in positions of power didn't help - and the field based sales force pretty much sealed the deal: the place was a mess.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:18PM (4 children)

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:18PM (#1001382) Journal

          There's some critical level of dysfunction above which groups can't prosper or even survive. Limiting the size seems a crude way to keep a group functional. What better methods are there? Where are the social science findings, to guide us on such questions? What do they teach in business school? As for types of governments, democracy seems wanting in many ways, but it's still the best we have.

          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:14PM (2 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:14PM (#1001447)

            I think Social Science struggles as it does because of the unpredictability of the "particles" in their universe. As such, a "typical" sampling may reach "critical mass" where things become fractious and counter-productive with as few as 100 members, or it may grow beyond 1000 members and remain idyllic - all depends on the nature of the members of the group.

            Then, of course, you can start building groups with outliers who work exceptionally well, or poorly, together. Thinking of our Legislatures now... it might be beneficial to reduce the House of Representatives by half, and insert a layer where each member of the house serves 200 smaller districts each with their own directly elected representative - so we might go from 435 representatives each representing ~800,000 citizens to 200 top level representatives, each with 200 deputy representatives: 40,000 deputies in total each deputy representing less than 9000 citizens. With a 9000:1 representation ratio, concerned citizens should have easy direct access to their deputy representatives, the deputies should be able to "know" all the other deputies in their district, and the legislator representative in the national house should be clearly accountable to the priorities posted by their deputies. Also: increasing the cost of lobbying by a factor of 100 should be a very good thing (probably why such a plan has never made it past the cracked idea on a message board stage.)

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            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:30PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:30PM (#1001506)

              tldr but I caught the last sentence: "increasing the cost of lobbying by a factor of 100 should be a very good thing"

              Yes. I would say increase the number of legislators and pay them very well. Make it an attractive, reasonably stable job and you'll get quality people. The current system grossly favors the independently wealthy and those with borderline psychiatric conditions.

            • (Score: 2) by Lester on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:40PM

              by Lester (6231) on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:40PM (#1001525) Journal

              Struggles because human brain has evolved to live in small groups.
              The first civilization, Sumerian, dates 5,000 years ago. Before, human kind lived in small grups, little tribes or clans. That's how our brain is wired. 5,000 years is too short time to evolution. Moreover, even in the last 5,000 years most human kind has lived in small groups.

          • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:32PM

            by istartedi (123) on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:32PM (#1001456) Journal

            Limiting the size seems a crude way to keep a group functional. What better methods are there?

            Militaries going all the way back to Rome (and probably further) have a well documented hierarchical approach. Platoons, legions, etc. If the officers who control units are a community, and *their* COs are a community, then it can work--but the military is a specialized entity, operating under conditions that wouldn't be acceptable for society at large. Some religious organizations seem to remain fairly cohesive at large numbers by having local churches, "stakes" in Mormonism, or some other unit with a degree of autonomy but still bound to follow rules set by an executive. They still have schisms though. Even military factions can break apart under threat of hanging for mutiny, so factionalism seems like a deeply ingrained part of the human condition.

            Maybe it's better to regard it as a feature, not a bug. If we didn't form factions, we'd have a monoculture. Monocultures are susceptible to being taken out all at once by one thing.

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    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:03PM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:03PM (#1001377) Journal

      Also, politics come from polis, meaning city. At that scale, democracy is manageable. See also the medieval Commune. See also how the only country to say "screw the bankers" was Iceland.

      Nations and international entities are sure useful, but the more the bureaucracy is separated by the subject, the more it gets independent and unaccountable. You are the Authority, not them. Not because it's written in masonic piece of paper called constitution, because God or whatever you believe in created you FREE as anybody else, and you shall not renounce this freedom. In case your freedom is an illusion I don't see the problem, keep on with your programming.

      --
      Account abandoned.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:29PM (#1001385)

        Politics comes from 'poli' (from greek: multiple, many) and 'tics' (latin: behavioural disorder).

        Even in ancient times it was obvious that those seeking power had many behavioural abberations, i.e. politics and politicians. Nothing has changed to this day.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:11PM (#1001380)

      I don't mean to downplay the impact of individual assholes or individual heroes, but I think the most important aspect by a large margin is actually on the number of people. Small enough communities that can run on direct democracy can do okay. Once everything gets big enough that you have to delegate leadership positions, it all goes to hell.

      It almost makes me want to embrace the ideas of anarchist philosophers like Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin was a contemporary of Karl Marx who told Marx that state socialism would collapse into authoritarianism, and he told him that more than fifty years before Red October. Anarchists - not James Bond and Mission Impossible villains, real anarchists - just think that large bureaucracies of any kind unavoidably become corrupt, and the only solution is to never have a bureaucracy. Anarchists want to create a society of tiny self-governing communities with no larger government structure of any kind. (I'm posting that brief explanation for anyone's benefit, JoeMerchant, I would bet you already know all of this.)

      The reason I'm not an advocate of anarchism is that anarchist communities will always be conquered by larger groups. If your community has 80 people in a direct democracy and mine has 1000 in any other form of political and economic organization, my community can do whatever it wants to yours and you won't have the resources to stop us. To the anarchist that says, "Socialism will never work because the bureaucracy will evolve into a dictatorship.", I say, "Anarchism will never work because anarchist groups are too small to defend themselves from larger communities of any kind. I will take my chances with socialism."

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:47AM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:47AM (#1001276)

    "Can collective ownership work in the rest of the UK?"

    Yes! And it should be done now! Immediately! Show the world.

    The rest of us, cowards that we are, will sit back, take notes, and make separate decisions on what might be done.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by ChrisMaple on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:13AM (10 children)

      by ChrisMaple (6964) on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:13AM (#1001289)

      Imagine having nothing you can call your own, that everything you make is immediately taken from you. You have no right to purchase or keep food, medicine, clothing or shelter. That's collective ownership, hell on Earth.

      Does it "work"? If "work" means my gang sets the rules, it works just fine.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Kalas on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:28AM (2 children)

        by Kalas (4247) on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:28AM (#1001297)

        Imagine having nothing you can call your own, that everything you make is immediately taken from you. You have no right to purchase or keep food, medicine, clothing or shelter. That's chattel slavery, hell on Earth.

        Does it "work"? If "work" means my gang sets the rules, it works just fine.

        FTFY

        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:05PM

          by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:05PM (#1001378) Journal

          po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

          --
          Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:04PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:04PM (#1001424)

          No you didn't.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:23PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:23PM (#1001384)

        You must have read a different Marx than the rest of us.

        Socialists aren't opposed to people having private property, and they're not opposed to people getting resources (food, money, clothing, shelter, entertainment) based on their work. Socialists are opposed to people getting resources based on what they own. If you and I work in a factory, or as plumbers, or doctors, or cleaners, or fruit harvesters and you do more work than me, you deserve more than me. That's fine. If I work in a factory, or as a plumber, doctor, cleaner, or fruit harvester and you are a person that owns the factory, plumbing business, medical office, cleaning service, or farm and you sit on a beach with booze and hookers while I work, and you get some of the money from my work, that's wrong.

        Capitalists flip their lids at the thought of people getting free stuff that they didn't earn, but somehow pay no attention to the fact that the average family in the 1% of wealthiest American families inherited more than 4 million dollars. The sky is falling if a Millennial gets food stamps, and it's even worse, a hell on earth, if someone from the Honduras is getting an appendectomy paid for by Medicaid. But somehow it's totally fine if a million Americans never worked a day in their lives and enjoy more luxury than 300 million other citizens will ever experience just because they got leftover money from motivated grandparents. Explain that.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:53PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:53PM (#1001438)

          "some" is OK. it is just that the owner or executive suite or investors is in charge of defining that "some". and human nature being what it is, their "some" will be much greater than the rest's "some". They have lots of good-sounding rationalizations for that and keeping it that way, also. like, "executive salaries account for only 1% of corporate revenue while employee health care costs 20%". and we eat up that false equivalence and say, give me more, sir!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:38PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:38PM (#1001510)

          It's not just that the owner gets a cut of your work, he pays significantly lower tax on it than you do.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @12:11AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @12:11AM (#1001550)

          If you and I work in a factory, or as plumbers, or doctors, or cleaners, or fruit harvesters and you do more work than me, you deserve more than me. That's fine.

          Marx said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." So that coupling is explicitly not there. If you produce 10 apples but only need 1 apple, you don't get to keep the extra 9 apples you produced. The State takes them from you and gives them to 9 other people who decided to slack that day. Well, that's at first. Later the commissar realizes he has the power of life and death over you, so why not keep 5 apples for himself and hand out 3 to others and sell 1 on the black market to support that hot little number in an apartment in Moscow. Then, when the secret police come around asking impertinent questions about the drop in his quota, he fingers you as a lazybones and possible capitalist wrecker and recommends they pick you up for enhanced interrogation about what happened to the other 6 apples you didn't surrender.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:24AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:24AM (#1001956) Journal

          You must have read a different Marx than the rest of us.

          Socialists aren't

          Marx != Socialists. The dude and his cult were crazy. You can pick that vibe up, if you actually read his stuff (for example, loopy nomenclature like "commodity fetishish" or the woo of labor theory of value which in Marxist hands becomes a taint that goods and workers can't be rid of). Socialists aren't usually that crazy.

          Socialists aren't opposed to people having private property, and they're not opposed to people getting resources (food, money, clothing, shelter, entertainment) based on their work. Socialists are opposed to people getting resources based on what they own.

          Sounds like you already went off the rails. What happens when I acquire ownership of resource production with my labor? "Socialists are opposed to people getting resources based on what they own."

          If I work in a factory, or as a plumber, doctor, cleaner, or fruit harvester and you are a person that owns the factory, plumbing business, medical office, cleaning service, or farm and you sit on a beach with booze and hookers while I work, and you get some of the money from my work, that's wrong.

          What's wrong about that? Sounds like a case of monkeys wanting grapes instead of cucumbers. Given that the person who owns the factory, plumbing business, medical office, cleaning service, or farm is employing you, indicates that there's more to this story than merely that it's not fair that they don't have to work as much (allegedly).

          Capitalists flip their lids at the thought of people getting free stuff that they didn't earn, but somehow pay no attention to the fact that the average family in the 1% of wealthiest American families inherited more than 4 million dollars.

          Using the power of the state to get free stuff they didn't earn versus private capital in private hands passed on to other private hands by choice? There is a difference here. I get that a pseudo-aristocracy, generated by inheritance, can cause problems - which haven't been discussed here. Ultimately, I don't see those problems as important enough to eliminate inheritance.

          The sky is falling if a Millennial gets food stamps, and it's even worse, a hell on earth, if someone from the Honduras is getting an appendectomy paid for by Medicaid. But somehow it's totally fine if a million Americans never worked a day in their lives and enjoy more luxury than 300 million other citizens will ever experience just because they got leftover money from motivated grandparents. Explain that.

          This is classic internet - refusal to acknowledge at all that there's a problem. You know, if we could get the perfect capitalist paradise by giving one Millennial food stamps and someone from Honduras an appendectomy, I think most hardcore capitalists would think that is a great deal. Because average food stamps averages roughly $1400 per year per person and average appendectomy bills of $33,000 [cbsnews.com] (Medicaid is actually "slightly higher"). That's orders of magnitude below round off error in a budget like the federal government.

          The catch is that there's 72 million Millennials and over 9 million Hondurans. So crudely, $100 billion per year to feed Millennials and $300 billion to do appendectomies on every Honduran (don't forget Honduras was just some country pulled out of the ass, there are seven billion other people out there in the world). There is this supreme lack of awareness of consequences of the toxic combination of generous social programs and open immigration policy, and how things can balloon out of control. Meanwhile, we have that the vast majority of Millennials can buy their own food, and we can keep the vast majority of the world from immigrating for that free stuff - what we do today.

          Keep in mind that there are two huge reasons that heavy anti-immigration sentiment exists: first, that the immigrants are competing for the same low income jobs (which I might add, socialist policies tends to make more scarce), and second, immigrants are competing for the same safety net dollars. It's too easy to characterize this as mere racism, when one ignores the dynamics at play. But anti-immigration people don't care about people they never see.

          Finally, I think it's telling that this whole argument is wholly cast as it being unfair that people have to work while someone else sits on a beach. In other words, we have to do this thing because rich people are getting off easy. There's no problem here to fix.

      • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:28PM (1 child)

        by Mykl (1112) on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:28PM (#1001539)

        Imagine having nothing you can call your own, that everything you make is immediately taken from you

        You forgot the other side of the coin - that everything everyone else in that community (including you) produces is partly yours.

        Big difference.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:35AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:35AM (#1001959) Journal

          You forgot the other side of the coin - that everything everyone else in that community (including you) produces is partly yours.

          Sorry, that's not the other side of the coin. The other side is the tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org]. What you can use up before someone else gets to it is yours.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by rleigh on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:07AM (1 child)

    by rleigh (4887) on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:07AM (#1001300) Homepage

    Tiny islands are special cases, of course you can't generalise it to the whole of the UK. It's an isolated and tightly-knit community. Collective ownership works on small scales like this, where everyone can buy into it, but on larger scales it clearly does not.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @12:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @12:13AM (#1001551)

      Isn't the entirety of the UK a collection of tiny islands?

      Greenland, now, that's an island.

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