Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 06 2021, @04:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the company-towns-and-company-scrip dept.

Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments:

Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state's economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.

The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.

The measure to further economic development with the "alternative form of local government" has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.

[...] The governor's economic development office did not respond to questions about the zones Wednesday.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:45PM (16 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:45PM (#1109603) Journal

    Communism doesn't scale, though. Humans spent at least 99% of our evolutionary history in smallish groups, mostly on the scale of extended families or clans; we even have a limit, Dunbar's Number or "the monkeysphere," on how many individual humans we can actually "think of as human" before they all start just blending together and greying out. I would wager that number, about 150 give or take a few dozen, is the maximum size Communism can really scale to.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @03:42PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @03:42PM (#1109667)

    Yeeees, with 80k+ members, Mondragon is failing hard.
    And communists can't live if each of them don't know every other one; this is why capitalism is superior, it can function even if none knows nobody else but himself.

    Come on, enlighten us. How is that socialism and capitalism can avoid the Dunbar number and still be functional, but communism can't.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:22PM (#1109710)

      She should weigh in, but I wager it is because capitalism is supposed to allow individual economic leeway that generally is not possible under communism. Of course that fails in the later stages of caputalism once the pyramids have gotten large enough and the average person struggles to just get by. Like right now in most western capitalist countries. Even the better ones with social safety nets like education and healthcare survival is still an unnecessarily difficult struggle because some greedy fucks want to sit on their piles of gold.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @10:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @10:58PM (#1109805)

        She should weigh in, but I wager it is because capitalism is supposed to allow individual economic leeway that generally is not possible under communism.

        The problems of communism are more complicated than suggested by your simple (simplified/simplistic?) answer. But I digress.

        I raised the narrower question of "What the heck the Dunbar's number has to do with communism?" for the benefit of Azuma, she's quite prone in this case to stuck with a non-answer and stop asking relevant questions on what makes communism hard or impossible.
        It is a lot better if she ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ than it is to think that she's got it and nothing else needs to be said.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 07 2021, @04:03AM (5 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday February 07 2021, @04:03AM (#1109872) Journal

      Very easily: they are both less intrusive and less against humans' (evil...) natures than communism. In the same way a lot of people seem to *need* the Big Angry Beard In The Sky to keep them from doing immoral things, I don't believe most humans are good-natured enough for communism to work. And if we all were, *any* economic system would work, because the flaw ALL of them have is that people forget money and goods and economic activity are for humans, not the other way around.

      Since this is the case, the next question we should ask ourselves is "what system has the longest time before it reaches an Ouroboros-like failure mode and turns into a cannibal orgy?" The answer appears to be a mix of capitalism and socialism, with the elasticity of any given good or service determining how "free market" the approach to it should be; the less elastic the demand (i.e., the more necessary and tied to survival it is), the less "market forces" ought to have a say in it. This means things like healthcare need to be waaaay over on the "socialist" side, while things like designer clothing and jewelry can be basically as cutthroat as they care to be.

      We have examples approaching close to this in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada to a slightly lesser extent, etc.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2021, @04:39AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2021, @04:39AM (#1109882)

        Something's wrong, Azuma is making too much sense.

        I think you are on the right track with elasticity, but it's not exactly that. Demand for food is pretty inelastic, but the free market does just fine producing food.

        Where you get the problem is when you have a situation where customers cannot make meaningful choices. Inelasticity is related to that because it takes away the choice of how much to buy, but it still allows for the choice of suppliers and substitute goods.

        Health care doesn't allow that either, except in elective procedures. Patients aren't really even permitted to choose their course of treatment, and it's too hard to choose doctors, with patient satisfaction determined more by the doctor's personal attributes than their medical skill.

        Basically, inelastic + monopoly = problem, which is economics 101. Health care isn't a monopoly, but it might as well be : no price competition, no meaningful choice of supplier, no ability for the patient to assess the quality of the treatment.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 08 2021, @01:53AM (1 child)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday February 08 2021, @01:53AM (#1110098) Journal

          I make plenty of sense. If people refuse to see it, because they would rather worship their false God du jour (libtertarian "free market" principles, Trump having won the election, "all taxation is theft," what-the-fuck-ever), that is a problem with them, not me :)

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:58PM

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:58PM (#1111305) Homepage Journal

            I agree. You usually make plenty of sense.

            And maybe most mothers warned their children about you, but mine never did.

            -- hendrik

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 08 2021, @06:22PM (1 child)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 08 2021, @06:22PM (#1110319) Homepage Journal

          The problem is she's an ideologue moron who thinks the proper way to fix an ingrown toenail is to cut your legs off so you can't get one ever again. Instead of, you know, something sane like fixing the ingrown toenail.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @08:46AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @08:46AM (#1110607)

            You always describe yourself when insulting others, intriguing.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:17PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:17PM (#1109706) Journal

    Actually, I think communism scales a little larger than a mere 150. With some minimal management skill, you can easily add a zero to that number. With better management, you can add one or two more zeros. With superb management, add yet another zero. A charismatic leader might be good for multiple zeros, but individual leaders only last a lifetime, no matter how charismatic. Without management, and trust in the management, your number of 150 is about right.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:36PM (#1109821)

      With some minimal management skill

      And this yet another trap: the economy is not all there is for human societies.
      One needs governance not just management. With the note that governance does not necessary imply government.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:23PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:23PM (#1109711)

    Communism doesn't scale, though.

    You don't seem to understand *how* communism is suppose to work.

    The central idea of communism is, the workers own the means of production. If you ever worked in a co-operative, that's the definition of a communism.

    The problem with communism is that there is inability to plan flows of ... capital. Especially on large scale and then down to small scale. So everything is stuck in quagmire. In capitalism, this mechanism is with the "wealthy class".

    Now, if there ever was some way of having a middle between the two idiotic extremes. Some way of allowing capital flows and some people to have more than others without blowing things completely out of proportion on either end?? Maybe some kind of a social-centric ideology??

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:11PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:11PM (#1109734)

      Socialism is workers own means of production.

      Communism is the government owns means of production.

      Socialism is generally better as it is the intersection of capitalism and communism.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:10PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:10PM (#1109808)

        Communism is the government owns means of production.

        Wrong. In the last stages of "successful" communism, it is supposed there is no government.

        That is one point of failure that makes communism an utopia - even assuming that this status is possible, there's no way to achieve it top-down approach starting from a society that values private property; "government as a mean to reach a non-government in which everybody behaves" is impossible for any practical purposes.

        And this is not the only point of failure.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:15PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 06 2021, @11:15PM (#1109810) Journal

      The central idea of communism is, the workers own the means of production. If you ever worked in a co-operative, that's the definition of a communism.

      False. That's the definition of socialism. For your convenience [wikipedia.org], with the emphasis on what you missed in your "definition":

      Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a philosophical, social, political and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money[3][4] and the state.[5][6]

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:55PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:55PM (#1109755)

    That's almost phrase for phrase the argument for authoritarianism from "Fire in the Lake".

    The thing about a 100 person Vietnamese village operating under hereditary dictatorship is a dictator of a 10 million person country can F over 9.999... million lives without F-ing over his own family, but the dictator of a farm village can't F over anyone because essentially everyone under his domain is some form of distant cousin or cousin-in-law at worst.

    Some dude has a nice house in a 10M person dictatorship you just kill him and take the house; you can't do that in a 100 person farm village dictatorship because the guy with a nice house is literally your son, or maybe nephew or something.

    Essentially you can run a vastly extended family on a dictatorship, but not much larger.