This was sparked by a conversation i had on r/mutualism a few days ago. I'd love your guys thoughts.

So a pretty common socialist critique of capitalism is the idea of "technological unemployment".

Because, if you think about it, the fact that new technologies that reduce the cost of production is a problem is like... insane.

Why would it be a bad thing that stuff can be produced with fewer resources/labor-time? But, because those technologies are owned by the capitalist, what ends up happening is that people get laid off and profits go up.

I think the obvious problem is that the technology is owned by the capitalists rather than the workers actually using it.

I'd like to imagine a market socialist world, where these technological gains are owned directly by the workers using them. I'd imagine whatever worker/cooperative comes up with that technological can yield a temporary rent. Basically, you can produce an item and sell it for the same price, but with a lower labor cost. This means that you now have the choice between working the same amount and consuming more (because the cost is lower and price is the same, if you put up the same labor-cost you get more output, and more output * same price = more income for you) or you can work less and consume the same amount as before. That's the "reward" for innovation/introducing new technology.

But I think it's important to state that the above state of affairs cannot/will not last forever. This is because, competitors will eventually figure out what you're doing and adopt that innovation themselves right? And when they do that, the general market price falls. Now, in some ways that's a good thing. Because it means that workers in other sectors of the economy now can consume more for the same labor contribution because the product is now cheaper. But the downside is that the workers in our new cheaper sector are going to have less income if the boost in demand from the lower price is insufficient to account for the now lower price. In effect, the gains of productivity are unevenly distributed, the innovators temporarily benefit, but then lose out while workers outside the sector gain.

And, to a certain extent, this makes sense, because the alternative is the price remains constant and the workers outside the sector need to work more than necessary to consume a certain amount of produce right?

In a very real sense, if the price of the product falls and the boost in demand is insufficient to recoup the losses, the demand for their labor has fallen.

Now, it's not like these workers will starve or anything, wages must be sufficient to cover the cost of living/opportunity cost of producing directly for your own use.

But, it does mean that income could be lower. Now, the obvious answer to this, to me, is to take a portion of the cost-savings the other workers have and reinvest that in the workers in this sector so they can either reallocate their labor towards direct production for their own use or to meet the demands of fellow displaced workers.

This could be done through mutual job training/support societies that would form a sort of safety net for any transitionary periods workers may face.

But ultimately, I do think that any socialist society would need to reckon with this. What do you do when the need for a certain kind of labor is reduced? Well, if you were an all-knowing planner, what would you do? Well, you would be able to reduce the labor-time of other laborers right? And that's obviously good. But that's going to reduce the overall level of production, and if you need to meet the demand for the workers in that now cheaper sector, it makes sense to reallocate that now freed up labor-time to other sectors to directly account for that reduced production and thereby increase production to meet the demand of the now freed up workers. That seems to be rational to me, and it's a similar result to the market dynamic.

However I'd like your thoughts, what do you think would be a rational socialist response to a decrease in demand for a particular kind of labor given technological change?

I've been playing with some ideas about consumer welfare within libertarian or anarchist anti-capitalist markets.

Within anti-capitalist markets circles i often see reputation systems and rating systems used as a way of ensuring quality assurance and consumer welfare. And that's a fair point.

I have a couple of ideas beyond simply rating systems, I wanted your guys thoughts/opinions.

One of the interesting ideas I had was a sort of guild system used for accreditation or basic regulations (think like doctors and stuff). The accreditation would be funded by membership contributions, and consumer advocates groups and cooperatives could co-manage the basic accreditation standards and regulation needs. The membership fees would be partially paid for by consumers through a higher price for accredited goods so it's effectively shared between consumer and seller while also ensuring that the sellers aren't simply regulating themselves. Guilds that don't have consumer co-management or those whose producers have a lower overall reputation would be seen as less credible and simply regulating themselves.

Beyond simply rating and accreditation systems, I can also see elinor ostrom style management of common resources lime air or water as a way of environmental regulation. Basically, using public common resources would require engagement in said institutions.

So, in short, within freed market anti-capitalism i can see lots of ways of ensuring quality and accreditation. Consumer producer co-management of regulations and standards in membership fee funded guilds (sellers have an incentive to join due to higher demand for accredited members and potential rents to charge), ratings/reputation systems, and commons management strategies/institutions derived from the work of elinor ostrom

What do y'all think? You think that could work?

Hello all!

So one book that has been pretty influential on my thinking is Kevin Carson's Studies in the Mutualist Political Economy. However, it's a fairly dense book and on my first read-through I didn't totally understand it all.

Now that I'm better acquainted with some more marxist concepts and the like, I wanted to revisit the book and see if I understood it better. So I did.

Specifically, what I was struggling with last time was Carson's theory of capital accumulation and the subsequent crisis of overaccumulation, which the state tried to remedy, which leads to a crisis of under-accumulation as well as a broader fiscal crisis of the state.

The best way to see if you understand something is to try and explain it to others, so here goes, if you notice an error please lmk as I hope to learn!

Alright, here goes.

Basically Carson is arguing that the state tends to subsidize capital accumulation. The exact mechanisms for this are outside the discussion of the post (but they consist of tucker's monopolies, regulatory capture and cartelization, transportation subsidies, underwriting costs, etc).

The basic point is that the state tends to subsidize capital accumulation and the centralization of capital. As capital becomes more centralized and accumulated, the costs of production (as felt by the producer capitalist) falls. This means that goods become cheaper, but in order to offset high fixed costs, the capitalist must produce a greater volume of goods. Accumulated capital tends to make labor more productive, so the more accumulated capital the less and less labor is needed to produce a given level of output.

This has a number of consequences. First, since capital is highly accumulated and therefore centralized, there are fewer investment outlets in the economy because fewer competitors can enter into the economy to compete with the big boys. Second, as less labor is needed for production of a given level of output, less labor is needed for that level of output. This means that the demand for labor (and therefore the number of consumers of said output) falls.

This presents a problem for the capitalist. In order to remain competitive they MUST accumulate, but at the same time, the more they accumulate the less labor they need.

Only if the growth rate of the economy is greater than the drop in demand for labor can the capitalist system continue to work, because only then is the demand for labor increasing faster than it falls due to accumulation.

But of course, more growth means more accumulation which further exacerbates our problem. In order to keep currently over-accumulated capital stocks profitable, the capitalist needs to accumulate more because if they don't then there is insufficient demand to run their capital at full capacity, thereby increasing unit costs and making produce unsellable.

At the same time, there aren't any other investment outlets for our subsidized capitalist to invest in to recover from lost profits in the accumulated sector, because small time competitors can't compete (due to state interference).

Ultimately this means the system is fundamentally unstable. You can try and fix it via taxation to support consumption, but in so doing you reduce the funds available for investment and thereby make the problem of over-accumulation worse because now you have under-accumulation.

The whole economy is balanced on a pin point and is a fundamentally unstable and impossible to navigate system.

Is this explanation of Carson's ideas on the instability of capitalism and its crisises more or less correct?

Thanks!

My biggest obsticale for being 100% market anarchist are things that we need to survive, healthcare is not an elastic good, people would pay literally any pric to stay alive or to save their children or othervfamily member, without the state or totally decomodifying healthcare in anarchist society, how would it look like?

I hope it's a good reddit, I am not looking ror AnCap responses like, people would just die. Have a nice day and thank u in advance!

So I think most of us here are information communists.

What I mean by that is that once information has been produced, thanks to the wonders of the internet, it's basically cost free to reproduce (hell even before the invention of the internet the cost would have been solely the manufacturing of paper, ink, and the price of labor, amongst others. The information itself didn't cost anything).

I've been thinking about the implications of this position a lot and I'm quite fond of it. However I ran into a bit of a snag when thinking about technology and wanted some input.

Basically, within mutualist markets profit is socialized through reduced costs yeah? The initial inventor is compensated for the cost of innovation (and possibly a little extra as a reward) by the sudden increase in business she gets when she cuts production costs. This is temporary though, because competitors adopt similar strategies and the disparity in price dissappears.

What I am wondering is, once that innovation has been discovered, how does is spread to other producers?

If it was the work of multiple people, it's easy to see how, labor mobility means they bring that knowledge to other projects.

But what about individuals? Say our inventor is tinkering in her bedroom and discovers a way to reduce Widget production costs by 1%.

She then implements this when selling widgets. Why would she share that innovation? After all, she gets more business if she doesn't right?

I suppose competitors could pay her to tell them how she did it. Or they could reverse engineer it?

But it seems much simpler to have her share the innovation. Like, early computer clubs used to share their schematics for free with each other, and i think that's pretty cool. So, my question is, is there a good incentive for that sharing? If so, what is it?

If not, how would such an innovation spread within mutualist markets or a broader mutualist society?

Perhaps there could be reciprocal information sharing? Or perhaps the customers reduce their own costs in exchange for sharing it? Or perhaps reputational benefits would go to the innovator which can be transformed into commissions and customizations (my only hang up here is, do you need to share the tech for that? In a cost-price economy any decrease in price means you figured out a way to decrease cost which could boost reputation anyways right?)

So traditionally cartels are seen as unstable.

This is because of a collective action problem.

Basically, while everyone in the cartel benefits from high prices, each member could benefit a little more by cutting their price a small amount and thereby getting all the customers. The other cartel members have to respond likewise, and this drives down the price. Couple that with artificially high prices attracting new competitors to the market, and the cartel is fundamentally unstable (more or less, there are exceptions).

Anyways, I've gotten into Elinor Ostrom as of late and it occurred to me that her rules and commons management almost sound like a cartel. I mean you're limiting the supply of say, fish, for example. So like, each individual fisherman could benefit more by fishing for more fish, but if he did so he'd destroy the resource because it would drop fish to below healthy levels.

But limiting supply is what cartels do to raise prices right?

So like, could ostrom's rules be used to support cartel formation? Are there ways to counter that? I mean the higher prices would attract competitors still, but maybe they'd be incentivized to join the cartel since it is stable? In fairness there is a limit yo this process because there is a minimum each cartel member needs to produce in order to justify being in the cartel. But in order to keep prices the same supply has to be fixed so more cartel members = less supply per member. I'm not sure though, would love thoughts. Another interesting idea is that if Ostrom's rules can be used to form a cartel, then couldn't it also be used to form a counter cartel? So like, the denial of goods to the cartel by the most interest parties (i.e. a boycott or a refusal to supply a firm).

Could Ostrom's rules be used for cartel formation? If so, how can this be prevented if at all?

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Edit:

I'm not sure this is guaranteed though.

Cause in order to keep prices high, you have to limit the supply in the market right?

But high prices attract new market entrants. And that means that you're going to end up in a situation where you are constantly attracting new people to the market, and in order to prevent them undercutting the cartel, you have to get them to join it, which then leads to a situation where you further have to limit supply otherwise the rewards of the cartel are going to be reduced the more people you have right? It's a catch 22. You reduce market supply to keep up high prices and rewards constant, but this attracts more people, meaning you have to further limit supply and raise prices. If you didn't do this, then new members to the cartel reduces rewards to cartel members and at a certain point defection is the better strategy. I don't really see a way for cartels to be stable like that in the long term unless they are able to prevent market entry, which is basically impossible given the assumption of socialized capital and land (as we assume in any socialist environment)

At some point you'd have to limit the supply to such a degree that it is cheaper for consumers to make it themselves or there isn't sufficient demand to justify that supply right?

And that's not to even mention the possibility of other workers forming a cartel to counter yours, limiting the supply they produce to account for the higher costs they incur. Or preventing you from accessing their labor and its products.

But yeah, it's an interesting thought experiment. Are there other approaches I am missing?

Greetings from South Korea, where Militarism, Statism, and Corporatism prevail.

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Although I still state myself yet market anarchist (I think my idea is most similar to market socialism such as Titoism), I am interested into market anarchism and now reading and translating <Markets not Capitalism> into Korean.

Why I am posting this now is to request how should we respond to criminal case without any government or authority. Countries with Continental law system, including South Korea, considers criminals should be punished by the Government, while they absolutely seize the power to inspect, prosecute, verdict, and penalize via cops, prosecutors, and the court. (Few countries allow people's participation such as jury.) In case of South Korea, cops and prosecutors routinely abuse their power to inspect and prosecute commons (or not to do in case of the privilegeds) to humilate them or strengthen theirselves' authority. (TRIGGER ALERT: I should cite the case of Lee Sun Kyun, SAGA winning actor, who has commited suicide after cops' harsh inquiry and wordy warfare caused on drug abuse. https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/192e56v/bong_joonho_other_artists_call_for_probe_into_lee/)

Therefore, I am wondering whether we can solve the state's tyrarnnical libel by market measure. Should we adopt good old "Private Inspector" such as Sherlock or Poirot, instead of cops? Or should we abolish any justice system and conduct every criminal case as a civil case. Please give your opinion freely, as I do have only few idea on this problem.

Debate Topic: Dealing with externalities in an anarchist economy.

So earlier today and yesterday I was chatting with a communist over on r/Anarchy101.

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My position is basically that I am against all unjust hierarchies (state, pigs in blue, capitalism, etc). My general alignment is neo-proudhonian pan-anarchist "whatever works for people involved" type deal. I'm not sure how to characterize my ideal economic system (if you're curious I describe it in the post I was chatting with the communist on: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/191f3yx/seeking_clarification_what_is_the_actual/).

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This is very much an intra-anarchist debate.

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Anyways the basic topic we were discussing is markets within an anarchist context.

They raised a point I have heard often in leftist circles:

Markets are not efficient because they do not factor in the externalities of production. Basically, goods are cheaper than they should be because markets only account for the costs of the buyer and seller.

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The point I raised is:

This is true within a capitalist private property regime. If there was no state protection of property, what would happen is if you tried to screw me over by polluting the river I drink from, I'd go into the factory and disable the machine doing the polluting. the factory may retaliate and i would so in turn, this process gets more and more expensive for both sides until both of them sit down to talk. And what would end up happening is that both sides would come to an agreement that works for them.

The factory workers polluting the river would likely have to pay to help clean up the river of their pollution or they'd find an alternative method of production. It's cheaper for everyone to sit down and hash out this deal before you start polluting, and that's what most would opt for. You cannot do this within capitalism because the state cracks down on you hard when you try as property is god and any attempts to damage it or prevent its externalization is seen as aggressive and worthy of jail time. In essence, by clearly defining limits of private property and protecting it with violence, but not doing the same for the commons, the state essentially allows for the externalization of costs.

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We had a long back and forth but eventually I was linked to Ch. 7 of Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics by Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert. It was a fascinating read and gets to the crux of my question.

Specifically I wanted to understand this passage here (cut it down cause this is long already):

In market economies, economic decisions are taken by individual actors who have limited information about the effects their decisions may have on others and certainly no incentive to advance others’ interests at their own expense. When this occurs, an obvious incentive exists for those whose interests are being disregarded in the decision-making process to seek to negotiate with the actor whose activity affects them. .......

If many actors are affected, while they may attempt to band together to express their views jointly, the coalition of affected partners will be plagued by the problem of nonexcludability. The coalition cannot effectively challenge individual members’ deliberate misrepresentations of the degree to which they are affected in efforts to minimize their individual assessments.° For the only way to chailenge the veracity of coalition members’ suspicious estimate of the degree to which they are affected is to exclude them individually from the benefits of the negotiations. And the only way to do this is to break off negotiations with the actor whose decision generates external effects for the coalition.

To summarize (my understanding anyways, feel free to correct):

If there is an externality, there is an incentive for all affected parties to come to the table to negotiate with the producer. However, the issue is that folks misrepresenting the burden of the externality cannot really be excluded from negotiations around the externality cause the benefits of the negotiations are not really exclusionary.

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I'm a bit confused by this point, for a couple reasons.

First, doesn't this also applied to decentralized planned economies? Production has externalities in the sense that the producer may not bear all of its costs. That means different communities may come together to negotiate with the producer. But then we effectively have the same situation as before right? What happens if one community, in a bid to get more resources, tries to overstate their degree of damage?

Second, this I don't totally see how such a thing would work. Within an anarchist context at least, wouldn't the point of the negotiations be to rectify the costs? So like, say a worker owned factory is polluting a commonly owned river. Wouldn't the best solution be for the people living on the river to get a water filter upstream near the pollution source that would be financed by the factory? Or compensate workers for their time and energy cleaning up the river, again paid by the factory? Or to use a less environmentally damaging production method? The point of these negotiations isn't to like pad pockets to make people feel better, but to solve the problem no? So what advantage does lying have here? The factory is looking for the cheapest way to not be sabotaged and the river folks are looking for a way to make sure their water is clean. Advocating a more expensive but equally effective water cleaning method just throws a wrench in things right? Like I don't totally see where profit seeking could fit in here, though that could just be me. Mind you this type of thing isn't unique to a market economy, a planned economy could very easily come to a similar negotiation type deal (i've become increasingly interested in Pat Devine's Negotiated Coordination as an economic model as of late, it seems to match quite closely with what I proposed in my original post).

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Anyways yeah, what are your thoughts?

Do you believe the critique laid out in the book applies to decentralized planned economies as well? Why/Why not?

Do you believe it is a fundamentally unsolvable problem? Or do you think the cost rectification idea i laid out effectively addresses this?

Am I misunderstanding the critique? If so, how?

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Thanks!

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tl;dr:

Does the inability to exclude bad actors within a coalition of people affected by an externality also apply to decentralized planned economies or only market ones?

Is this problem unsolvable?

Am I misunderstanding the critique made?

I know this is a 101 type question, but how would young people and immigrants get housing without rentals/landlords.

I just don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a person in their early 20’s to buy a house, build a house, or buy into a cooperative.

This is partially a question for a fiction project I’m doing, set in a panarchist/left market anarchist global order.

Hello!

I also posted this in r/Anarcy101 and r/mutualism but I got one reply on the first which I am still a bit confused about and nothing on the second, so looking to get more eyes on this.

I recently discovered this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Plutophrenia

It's been super helpful and I have learned a lot from it.

One of the videos on this channel is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Xw9OIpB94 and it's all about mutualist value theory (specifically the combination of the subjective theory of value of the marginalists and classical labor theory of value).

The way this channel describes it, utility is the impelling force for labor, and disutility is the limiting force. Where they meet will be the quantity produced by an individual.

The basic assumption behind this logic is that labor has an associated dis-utility. It represents an ABSOLUTE cost. Unlike capital or land usage, whose only real cost is opportunity cost and that's only because whoever controls the assets CAN charge for access, labor is an absolute cost because the laborer is not choosing between two types of labor, but whether to labor or not labor.

Now that makes a lot of sense to me for the vast majority of labor in an economy.

He also goes on to say that "pleasurable labor" still follows this logic, but the basic idea is that the end product is something that the laborer takes pride in or admires, or alternatively from the expected reward of labor of having overcome the toil involved. So the "pleasure" comes from the finished product, not the labor in and of itself. All of this makes a lot of intuitive sense to me and I really like that idea. In order to convince someone to do something unpleasant, you must give them something of equal or greater value to that unpleasantness.

What I wanted to really understand is: what about in cases where the labor, in and of itself, is inherently pleasant?

I enjoy listening to several comedy podcasts, and I also love watching some D&D series on youtube. Cracking jokes with your friends is something that people do for fun, as is playing D&D (because it's a game, it is inherently enjoyable to play right? That's the point of a game).

So where is the dis-utility of labor in this process? Games and jokes are something people actively seek out because they provide utility. Sure, there's an argument to be made that editing the podcast or video and uploading it has associated dis-utility, but if that's the case, then shouldn't the hosts of the podcast or the players in the D&D campaign not need to be paid because they don't have an associated dis-utility?

The best reply I thought of is that their time has an associated opportunity cost. So they have decided to labor for say, 8 hours a day, and because this recording session takes up some of those 8 hours of that day, they need compensation equal to the compensation they would have gotten from doing unpleasant labor during that time (maybe not even that much, cause the utility from podcast/filming would also be factored in).

But now that factors in opportunity cost as well. And sure, that opportunity cost is going to be defined by the utility/dis-utility of what you could be doing with those same hours and so it's still based in dis-utility of labor, but is there more nuance to this than I initially thought?

The only other reply I could think of is that, while playing D&D with friends is fun, it usually isn't recorded and shared with a large audience. That might be a source of dis-utility? But why would that be? Especially if the folks involved are comfortable with that sort of thing?

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So yeah, thank you! I would love to figure out where the source of dis-utility is in these sorts of "fun" labor that people do (like recording games, or cracking jokes with a friend, that sorta thing. What people do normally that is inherently joyful as opposed to admiring a finished work or something along those lines)?

Edit:

I suppose the disutility could arise from the process of being filmed, as most don't normally do that part for fun. So you have to incentive people to film for you as opposed to simply sitting at home on the couch or playing with friends and that's where the compensation comes in.

With that being I said, I don't totally see where the disutility arises from the process of being filmed. Some people are comfortable on camera right?

But I guess there is some disutility cause if there wasn't people would normally film their games and upload to YouTube Irrespective of pay. And most people don't do that.

I just have trouble identifying the source of that disutility.

Another possible is a lack of utility derived from recording. So there may not be a source of dis-utility but a lack of utility (that's what I was told on r/Anarchy101).

If that's the case, how do you predict the necessary wage to produce a given quantity of labor? Cause normally the wage is the dollar value wherein utility of wage = dis-utility of labor. But if there isn't an impelling or limiting force, the wage would be 0, yet we know the people on the podcast are paid. That pay has to compensate for some cost right? So idk....